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IT  LIBRARIES 

JUL  1  7  2003 


CimENTI^UE 
DOEs4joVemCULATE 


ROTCH 


^■^ 


EDITORS 

Andrew  Todd  Marcus 

Lauren  Kroiz 

Christine  Cerqueira  Caspar 

ADVISORY  BOARD 

Mark  Jarzombek,  Chair 
Stanford  Anderson 

Dennis  Adams 
Martin  Bressanl 

Jean-Louis  Cohen 
Charles  Correa 
Arindam  Dutta 
Diane  Ghirardo 
Ellen  Dunham-Jones 
Robert  Haywood 
Hasan-Uddin  Khan 
Rodolphe  el-Khoury 
Leo  Marx 
Mary  McLeod 
Ikem  Okoye 
Vikram  Prakash 
Kazys  Varnelis 
Cherje  Wendelken 
Gwendolyn  Wright 
J.  Meeim  Yoon 


Cover  image:  C.  Caspar  from  vintage  Hol- 
lywood set  photo,  courtesy  of  John  Divola 

Title  page  image:  A.  Marcus 


PATRONS 

Imran  Ahmed 

Mark  and  Elaine  Beck 

Robert  F  Drum 

Gail  Fenske 

Liminal  Projects,  Inc. 

R.T.  Freebairn-Smith 

Robert  Alexander  Gonzalez 

Jorge  Otero  Pailos 

Annie  Pedret 

Vikram  Prakash 

Joseph  M.  Siry 

Richard  Skendzel 


thresholds  26 


en^amre 


d 


EDITORIAL  POLICY 

Thresholds  is  published  biannually  in  Janu- 
ary and  June  by  the  Department  of  Archi- 
tecture at  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of 
Technology. 

Opinions  in  Thresholds  are  those  of  the 
authors  alone,  and  do  not  necessarily 
represent  the  views  of  the  editors  or  the 
Department  of  Architecture. 

No  part  of  Thresholds  may  be  photocopied 
or  distributed  without  written  authoriza- 
tion. 

Thresholds  is  funded  primarily  by  the  De- 
partment of  Architecture  at  MIT  Alumni 
support  also  helps  defray  publication 
costs.  Individuals  donating  $100  or 
more  will  be  recognized  in  the  journal  as 
Patrons. 


CORRESPONDENCE 

Thresholds 

Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology 

Department  of  Architecture 

Room  7-337 

77  Massachusetts  Avenue 

Cambridge.  MA  02139 

thresh@mit.edu 


PRINTING 

Copyright  Spring  2003 
Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology 
ISSN:  1091-711X 


Printed  by  Kirkwood  Printing.  Wilming- 
ton, MA.  Body  text  set  in  News  Gothic 
MT;  titles  set  in  Futura;  cover  title  set  in 
Coronet;  digitally  published  using  Adobe 
InDesign. 


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
Thanks   to   Carl    Solander.    Aliki    Hasiotis, 
Jessica    Barr,    Jeremy    Voorhees,     Nancy 
Turnquist.     Charity     Scribner,     Dilip     da 
Cunha.  and  the  Family  McMillin. 

Many  thanks  to  Tom  Fitzgerald,  Eduardo 
Gonzales,  and  Susan  Midlarsky  for  their 
computer  assistance. 

We  are  grateful  also  to  Jack  Valleli.  Joanna 
Mareth,  and  Minerva  Tirado  for  their  con- 
tinued support. 

Special  thanks  to  Stanford  Anderson  and 

Mark  Jarzombek. 


Contents 


Andrew  Todd  Marcus      4 

Introduction 

T.  Scott  McMillin      8 

The  Frolic  Architecture  of  Snow:  Building  on  Emerson's  Drift 

Nataly  Gottegno 
Desert  Oasis 

Christine  Cerqueira  Caspar      22 

From  Alienated  to  Aleatory:    Nature  m  a  Post-Post-Modern  World 

Krystol  Chang      26 

Weather  Resistant 

John  Divclo      32 

Artificial  Nature 

Mark  Burry       38 

Re-natured  Hybrid 

David  Gissen      43 

Bigness  vs.  Green-ness:  The  Shared  Global  Ideology  of  the  Big  and  the  Green 

Javier  Arbona,  Lara  Greden,  Mitchell  Joachim      48 

Nature's  Technology.  The  Fab  Tree  Hab  House 

Mark  Jarzombek      54 

Sustainability,  Architecture,  and  "Nature":  Between  Fuzzy  Systems  and  Wicked  Problems 

Petur  H.  Armonnson      57 

Elements  of  Nature  Relocated:  The  Work  of  Studio  Granda 

Sonjit  Sethi      64 

Experimental  Ambulation:  Argumnent  for  Building  a  Device 

Matthev/  Pierce      70 

Nature  in  a  Middle  State:  A  Library  on  the  East  Boston  Waterfront 

Peter  Fritzell      76 
Reading  the  Man  of  Sand  County:  An  Essay  on  A  Sand  County  Almanac 

Mark  Goulthorpe      82 
Notes  on  Digital  Nesting:  A  Poetics  of  Evolutionary  Form 

Sanford  Kv/inter      90 

The  Computational  Fallacy 

Illustration  Credits      93 

Contributors      94 

Call  for  Submissions      96 


Andrew  Todd  Marcus 

Introduction 

On  Thoreau,  Walking,  &  Nature 


Environmentalists  across  the  gamut  of  movements  widely 
quote  Henry  David  Thoreau's  v\/ritings  in  the  service  of  a 
call  to  ecological  action.  "In  Wildness  is  the  preservation 
of  the  vi/orld"  -  a  clipped  quote  from  the  short  essay  "Walk- 
ing" -  has  become  a  rallying  call  to  ethical  stewardship, 
management,  and  preservation  of  some  ill-defmed  nature. 
This  reading  of  Thoreau  fundamentally  misappropriates 
his  definition  of  "wildness"  and  the  spirit  in  which  he  uses 
the  word.  It  confuses  wildness  with  wilderness  and  as- 
sumes an  allegiance  to  an  objective  environmentalist  end. 
In  fact,  Thoreau's  ideas  are  more  in  concordance  with  the 
concept  of  the  rhizome,  smooth  space,  and  nomadism  as 
proposed  by  Gilles  Deleuze  and  Felix  Guattari. 

Thoreau's  writing  deserves  a  place  in  modern  discourse  in 
the  hope  that  his  wildness  may  reveal  a  method  for  read- 
ing, writing,  and  understanding  nature  and  the  cultural 
landscape.  This  wildness,  a  form  of  extreme  self-con- 
sciousness, requires  what  Peter  Fritzell  calls  "a  tolerance 
for  ambiguity  that  is  very  difficult  to  sustain.  It  is,  in 
essence,  a  dedication  to  paradox,  and  even  an  occasional 
delight  in  uncertainty,  that  can  be  extremely  unsettling."' 
It  IS  this  ambiguity  that  Denatured  hopes  to  investigate. 


Thoreau,  Walking,  and  the  Instantaneous  Redefinition 
of  Nature 

In  some  sense,  the  act  of  walking  as  described  by  Thoreau 
embodies  a  worldview  oddly  placed  in  intellectual  history. 
In  the  midst  of  the  Enlightenment  and  at  the  dawn  of  the 
Industrial  Revolution,  Thoreau  called  for  a  dynamic  under- 
standing of  nature  that  transcended  the  contemporary 
emerging  discussion  on  environmental  issues.  Modern 
environmentalism,  a  product  of  the  sensibilities  of  Pm- 
chot  and  the  romanticism  of  Muir,  embraces  Enlighten- 
ment conceptions  of  objectivity  and  rationality  and  finds 
itself  mired  in  the  twentieth  century  discourse  of  social 
and  power  relations.  Fritzell  suggests  that  the  dominant 
rhetorical  stance  of   applied  science,  environmental  dis- 


course, and  writing  about  nature  is  fundamentally  positiv- 
istic  and  representational.^  While  Thoreau's  conception  of 
nature  found  its  stylistic  roots  in  both  eastern  philosophy 
(especially  Hinduism)  and  European  romanticism,  his 
description  of  walking  is  fundamentally  outside  of  the 
positivistic  dialectics  that  enforce  and  entail  a  view  of  rela- 
tions between  language  and  experience  in  which  words  are 
devices  of  representation.  Thoreau's  text  is,  in  its  constant 
self-examination,  more  akin  to  Barthes,  Foucault,  and  Der- 
rida  and  their  denial  of  the  objective  nature  of  discourse. 
Unfortunately,  the  legacy  of  post-modern  discourse  is  a 
malaise  of  sorts,  unable  to  assign  value  to  ideas,  and  de- 
void of  ethics.  Thoreau's  walking  begins  to  provide  some 
ground  for  ethics,  and  more  than  ethics  -  an  inner  experi- 
ence of  spirituality  more  akin  to  Bataille  -  which  has  been 
seemingly  lost  in  modernity.^ 

Thoreau  begins  his  treatise  on  walking  by  diminishing  the 
importance  of  civil  freedoms.  He  seeks  to  "speak  a  word 
for  nature,  for  the  absolute  freedom  and  wildness"  there- 
in.^ He  presents  the  walker  as  saunterer,  and  locates  him 
outside  of  Church  and  State  and  People.  It  is  here,  alone, 
that  the  walker  must  face  Fritzell's  ambiguity,  sans  terre, 
without  a  land  or  home,  but  equally  at  home  everywhere. 
To  even  begin  a  walk,  one  must  be  prepared  to  cast  off 
one's  entire  history,  both  civil  and  personal: 

The  thought  of  some  work  will  run  in  my  head  and  I 
am  not  where  my  body  is  -  I  am  out  of  my  senses.  In 
my  walks  I  would  fain  return  to  my  senses.  What  busi- 
ness have  I  in  the  woods  if  I  am  thinking  of  something 
out  of  the  woods?- 

In  every  sense,  Thoreau  demands  an  absolute  commitment 
to  walking,  so  much  so  that  he  implicates  the  entire  self  in 
the  act  and  can  accept  no  alternative. 

Much  has  been  made  of  Thoreau's  understanding  of  local- 
ity, but  as  he  discusses  the  walks  within  a  ten  mile  radius 
of  his  home  his  interest  is  not  in  viewing  linked  points  and 
setting  destinations  but  in  an  evolving  relationship  to  the 


4     Marcus 


land.  For  Thoreau,  the  space  through  which  walking  tran- 
spires constantly  folds.  Points  may  remain,  but  trajecto- 
ries redefine  themselves  on  each  walk,  and  while  the  same 
raw  material  remains,  the  state  of  the  walker  is  in  flux. 
So  then,  a  walk  unfolds  not  in  allocation  of  space,  but  in 
internal  re-experience.  This  unfolding  takes  place,  largely, 
outside  of  the  village  (or,  as  Thoreau's  etymological  study 
suggests,  the  place  where  many  walks  converge.)  The 
space  occupied  in  a  walk  defies  linearity  and  striation,  and 
though  it  may  turn  in  on  itself  or  down  a  previously  aban- 
doned road  (such  as  the  case  with  the  poem  "Old  Marlbor- 
ough Road"),  new  meaning  is  constantly  discovered. 


Ethics,  Responsibility,  and  the  Genius  of  Knov/ledge 

The  responsibility  involved  in  walking  is  found  not  so  much 
in  where  to  walk,  but  how  to  walk: 

What  IS  it  that  makes  it  so  hard  sometimes  to  deter- 
mine whither  we  will  walk?. ..There  is  a  right  way;  but 
we  are  very  liable  from  heedlessness  and  stupidity  to 
take  the  wrong  one.  We  would  fam  take  that  walk, 
never  yet  taken  by  us  through  this  actual  world,  which 
is  perfectly  symbolical  of  the  path  which  we  love  to 
travel  in  the  interior  and  ideal  world;  and  sometimes, 
no  doubt,  we  find  it  difficult  to  choose  direction,  be- 
cause it  does  not  yet  exist  distinctly  in  our  idea.^ 

Thoreau  concerns  himself  primarily  with  internal  direction, 
and  relies  on  nature  to  provide  the  ethics  of  the  walk.  We 
are,  in  fact,  "part  and  parcel  to  nature";  that  is,  on  the 
fractal  boundary  of  the  ever-changing  with  the  whole  of  our 
options  understood  instantaneously  within  the  moment  of 
advancement.'  Nature  itself  provides  all  the  information  a 
walker  needs  and  allows  the  walker  to  transcend  the  path 
behind  and  enter  into  the  very  order  of  things.  The  respon- 
sibility, then,  is  not  in  the  surveying  out  of  space  and  lay- 
ing of  lines  (or  the  organization  of  knowledge,)  but  rather 
in  the  attentiveness  to  subtle  changes  and  the  acquisition 
of  new,  indeterminate  knowledge. 

Genius  is  a  light  which  makes  the  darkness  visible, 
like  a  lightning's  flash,  which  perchance  shatters  the 
temple  of  knowledge  itself, -and  not  a  taper  lighted  at 
the  hearth-stone  of  the  race,  which  pales  before  the 
light  of  common  day.^ 

Genius,  a  sort  of  communion  with  nature,  shatters  knowl- 
edge and  tells  us  that  we  know  nothing.  More  truly,  it 
informs  us  that  what  we  thought  we  knew  is  but  a  scion 
of  that  which  there  is  to  know.  Onwards  and  ever  expand- 
ing, linearity  collapses  and  nature  moves  in  all  directions 
simultaneously  This  also  denies  the  need  for  a  predictable 
and  traceable  direction  of  knowledge  within  history.  The 
practical  upshot  of  such  knowledge  of  nature  is  not  to  get 


lost  in  possibility  and  deny  purpose,  but  to  spread  purpose 
outward  in  infinite  directions.  So,  one  may  walk  many 
places  at  once  and  inhabit  many  landscapes,  some  folding 
in  on  themselves  and  reintroducing  knowledge  to  the  feed- 
back loop,  and  some  moving  steadily  outward.  Thoreau, 
then,  "demands  something  that  no  culture  can  give,"  for 
no  store  of  knowledge  can  keep  up  with  one  who  walks  as 
part  and  parcel  to  nature." 

This  expansion  is  essentially  reflected  in  the  rhizomatic 
idea  of  Deleuze  and  Guattari.  The  rhizomatic  principles  of 
connection  and  heterogeneity,  multiplicity,  and  asignifying 
rupture  all  hold  true  in  Thoreau's  walking,  meaning  that 
any  point  of  a  rhizome  can  and  must  be  connected  to  the 
whole.  This  is  the  embodiment  of  the  part  and  parcel  of 
nature  that  Thoreau  expounds.  Nature,  described  for  the 
single  walker,  is  described  for  all.  The  multiplicity,  in  its 
substantive  sense,  loses  a  subjective/objective  relationship 
to  nature,  for  the  individual  walks  (of  myriad  walkers)  re- 
tain independence  only  insofar  as  they  are  discrete  direc- 
tions of  growth.  The  asignifying  rupture  and  consequent 
regrowth  is  found  in  Thoreau's  understanding  of  progress. 

Such  motion  is  outward,  and  transcends  an  enlightenment 
science  that  moves  only  forward.  The  scientific  method, 
hampered  by  its  own  boundaries,  then  becomes  merely 
useful,  and  can  offer  no  definition  of  nature.  It  is  con- 
cerned, by  definition,  with  what  is  already  conceivable  and 
can  only  move  outside  of  itself  through  the  wild  actions  of 
those  who  are  both  genius  and  scientist,  those  prepared 
to  shatter  knowledge,  or  more  likely,  unconcerned  with 
knowledge  at  all.  These  scientists  become,  as  it  were, 
walkers.  Thoreau  is  calling  for  an  expanded  contact  with 
nature  -  a  continuous  evolution  in  the  place  of  strict  linear- 
ity of  purpose: 

[A]  Knowledge  useful  in  a  higher  sense:  for  what  is 
most  of  out  boasted  so-called  knowledge  but  a  con- 
ceit that  we  know  something,  which  robs  us  of  the 
advantage  of  our  actual  ignorance?. ..My  desire  for 
knowledge  is  intermittent,  but  my  desire  to  bathe  my 
head  in  atmospheres  unknown  to  my  feet  is  perennial 
and  constant.  The  highest  that  we  can  attain  is  not 
Knowledge,  but  Sympathy  with  Intelligence.'" 

Thoreau,  then,  places  the  walker  on  a  sort  of  border  life. 
He  intimates  an  ethics  of  walking,  and,  consequently,  an 
ethics  of  the  search  for  and  use  of  knowledge.  TS.  Mc- 
Millin,  in  Our  Preposterous  Use  of  Literature,  suggests  that 
Thoreau's  approach  towards  reading  smoothly  makes  the 
transition  to  walking,  and,  if  "reading  is  nothing  other  than 
a  method  of  thinking  [and]  of  gathering  the  world;"  it  is 
essentially  a  form  of  walking." 


Marcus    5 


Walking  in  the  Space  Between 

Thoreau's  call  for  a  constant  redefinition  of  nature  is  as 
Fritzell  promised,  ambiguous  and  difficult.  Deleuze  and 
Guattari,  wtiile  making  similar  observations,  demand  less 
and  elucidate  more.  It  is  in  thie  juxtaposition  of  the  tfiree 
writers'  conception  of  nature  that  a  true  ethic  may  be 
revealed. 


bound  by  the  civilized  apparatus,  that  Thoreau  calls  each 
individual  to  shorten  the  time  between  cataclysms  and 
constantly  redefine  our  participation  in  landscape  -  a  sort 
of  instantaneous  evolution.  The  cultural  denial  of  Deleuze 
and  Guatten's  war  machine  is  exactly  what  Thoreau  means 
by  "a  wildness  whose  glance  no  civilization  can  endure." 
Civilization  (and  the  clear  path  though  the  village)  is  the 
striated  space  that  denies  wildness. 


Jaques  Derrida,  in  his  essay  "Differance",  offers  a  crucial 
link  between  Thoreau  and  Deleuze  and  Guattari: 

Finally,  a  strategy  without  finality,  what  might  be 
called  blind  tactics,  or  empirical  wandering  if  the 
value  of  empiricism  did  not  itself  acquire  its  entire 
meaning  in  its  opposition  to  philosophical  responsibil- 
ity. If  there  is  a  certain  wandering  in  the  tracing  of 
differance.  it  no  more  follows  the  lines  of  philosophi- 
cal-logical discourse  than  that  of  its  symmetrical  and 
integral  inverse,  empirical  discourse.  The  concept  of 
play  keeps  itself  beyond  this  opposition,  announcing, 
on  the  eve  of  philosophy  and  beyond  it.  the  unity  of 
chance  and  necessity  in  calculations  without  end.'- 

The  concept  of  differance  situates  itself  in  the  space 
between,  in  the  smooth  space  of  Deleuze  and  Guattan's 
nomad  and  m  the  scope  of  Thoreau's  walk.  Play  allows 
a  movement  in  the  space  between  and  moving  through 
Thoreau's  literal  sunset  to  Derrida's  eve  to  Deleuze  and 
Guattan's  rhizomatic  nose,  and  here  we  find  that  "unity 
of  chance  and  necessity  in  calculations  without  end"  that 
allows  Thoreau  endless  walks  and  the  nomad  limitless 
speed.  Thoreau,  in  fact,  explicitly  leaves  room  for  play 
-  for  the  uncertainty  of  the  space  between: 

I  would  not  have  every  man  nor  every  part  of  man  cul- 
tivated any  more  than  I  would  have  every  acre  of  earth 
cultivated:  part  will  be  tillage,  but  the  greater  part  will 
be  meadow  and  forest...'-' 

Deleuze  and  Guattari  discuss  this  same  middle  in  "A  Thou- 
sand Plateaus": 

It's  not  easy  to  see  things  in  the  middle  rather  than 
looking  down  on  them  from  above  or  up  at  them  from 
below,  or  from  left  to  right  it  right  to  left:  try  it,  you'll 
see  that  everything  changes.   It's  not  easy  to  see  grass 

in  things  and  in  words." 

Smooth  space  takes  advantage  of  this  middle  and  leaves 
us  with  room  for  play  in  which  to  encounter  nature.  We  set 
our  lines  of  sight  and  so  have  intermittent,  personal  cata- 
clysms. At  these  times,  the  technological  or  enlightened 
state  (or,  alternatively,  the  ever-expanding  opportunistic 
global  consumerism)  appropriates  the  walking  nomad 
into  its  war  machine  in  a  desperate  attempt  at  self-pres- 
ervation.   It  IS  through  constant  wildness,  or  refusal  to  be 


Wildness  in  Design 

Through  Thoreau's  conception  of  walking.  I  have  explored 
how  one  may  begin  to  read  and  experience  knowledge  and 
landscape  rhizomatically.  It  is  more  difficult  to  conceive  of 
how  one  may  design  and  build  architecture  or  landscape 
that  embodies  the  smooth  space  of  the  rhizome.  Architec- 
ture and  landscape  design  does  not  seem  to  achieve  true 
smooth  space  in  that  the  viewer/inhabitant/walker's  mind 
cannot  be  manipulated.  The  experience  of  a  place,  in  plan 
and  section,  cannot  necessarily  draw  a  visitor  or  inhabit- 
ant into  a  pre-defined  smooth  space,  and  such  a  space  is 
a  self-denying  paradox.  Texture,  light,  and  situation  may 
begin  to  set  the  conditions  for  what  Bernard  Tschumi  calls 
an  "event-space",  but  ultimately  the  true  experience  of  the 
smooth  space  is  left  to  the  observer. 

If  production  and  representation  work  to  move  the  event- 
space  closer  to  the  moment  of  design  and  observation,  a 
true  smooth  space  of  built  form  may  be  reached.  That  is, 
the  process  of  design  may  become  more  important  than 
the  representation  and  the  realization.  While  it  is  difficult 
to  find  examples  of  a  building  or  landscape  conceived  to 
be  in  a  constant  state  of  design,  we  can  look  to  the  integ- 
rity of  modes  of  representation  as  an  indication,  and  the 
concept  of  a  tracing  and  a  map  may  be  invoked. 

The  rhizome  is  altogether  different,  a  map  and  not  a 
tracing....What  distinguishes  the  map  from  the  tracing 
IS  that  it  IS  entirely  oriented  towards  an  experiment  in 
contact  with  the  real.  The  map  does  not  reproduce 
the  unconscious  closed  m  upon  itself:  it  constructs 
the  unconscious.'^ 

The  map  can  begin  to  mark  smooth  space  by  redefining 
space  itself  and  examining  dynamic  events  within  space.  A 
map  must  be  redrawn  as  the  landscape  of  the  mind  chang- 
es, and  as  the  needs  of  the  walker  evolves.  It  is,  however, 
more  than  a  data  representation.  It  allows  and  demands 
dynamism  in  its  reading  and  its  production,  and  refuses 
static  interpretation.  As  the  architect's  conceptions  of 
the  intentions  for  the  site  change,  the  data  is  pliable  and 
the  map  adjusts.  But  Deleuze  and  Guattari,  in  a  constant 
dialectic,  question  their  dualism  and  privileging  of  a  map 
over  a  trace.    In  a  true  feedback  loop,  a  map  produces  a 


6    Marcus 


trace  produces  a  map,  and  so  the  image  is  never  at  rest, 
only  caught  in  a  moment  in  time. 


Denatured 

In  design  studios  students  are  asked  to  investigate  ideas 
and  come  forth  with  a  complete  representation  of  their 
project.  In  the  professional  world,  we  construct  buildings 
and  landscapes,  but  little  room  exists  to  re-evaluate  and 
redesign  a  completed  project.  We  hope  for  sustalnabillty 
through  low  energy  consumption  and  low  maintenance, 
but  the  investigation  ends  with  construction  and,  if  we  are 
fashionable  enough,  the  consideration  of  the  design  moves 
on  to  the  critics. 

The  question,  then,  is  how  to  design  or  write  as  Thoreau 
walks  -  at  the  tip  of  the  rhizome,  or  on  the  edge  of  the 
myriad  shards  of  an  exploded  ideology,  and  moreover,  how 
to  let  the  nature  of  our  built  form  continue  to  evolve.  De- 
sign education  and  contemporary  theoretical  debate  deny 
this.  As  Deleuze  and  Guitarri  point  out,  psychoanalytic 
theory  and  the  expanding  sphere  of  a  global  western  cul- 
ture abhor  it.  The  articles  in  Denatured  act,  then  as  a  dis- 
course only,  and  welcome  the  infinite  new  directions  for  the 
reader  to  walk,  herein.  Denatured  proposes  that,  through 
an  active  dialectic,  the  work  presented  here  can  begin  to 
Illuminate  the  edges  and  folds  of  the  space  between. 

Perhaps  it  is  through  the  non-theoretical  and  nonmtuitive 
that  IS  the  same  time  non-utilitarian  that  we  may  access 
the  ambiguity  of  an  ill-defined  nature.  For  example,  proj- 
ects such  as  the  library  by  Matthew  Pierce  and  the  works 
of  Studio  Granda  as  described  by  Petur  Armannsson  deal 
with  nature  on  an  ethical  and  spiritual  level.  Through  their 
non-prescrlptlon  and  rugged  refusal  to  align  themselves 
with  a  theory  other  than  an  extreme  and  personal  sensitiv- 
ity to  their  physical  place  in  the  world,  they  are  involved 
in  constant  observation,  interrogation,  and  absolute  re- 
ceptivity. Alternatively,  through  Nataly  Gattegno's  Desert 
Oasis,  we  begin  to  understand  how  the  process  of  making 
architecture  is  as  vital  to  understanding  nature  as  the  act 
of  building.  Mark  Goulthorpe  and  The  Fab  Hab  Tree  House 
examine  different  ways  In  which  technology  can  aid  us  m 
understanding  nature  while  Christine  Cerquiera  Caspar 
and  Stanford  Kwmter  question  the  very  need  for  It  to  do  so. 
Finally,  Sanjit  Sethi's  artwork  questions  the  Impetus  to  ex- 
amine the  ambiguous  in  all  of  Its  impossible  complexity. 


For  it  IS  to  be  hoped  that  such  an  unfolding  complexity  and 
its  concurrent  motion  brings  assurance  as  well  as  spiritual 
tribulation,  unleashing  the  possibility  that  we  can  "saunter 
towards  the  Holy  Land,  till  one  day  the  sun  shall  shine 
more  brightly  than  it  ever  has  done. ..and  light  up  our  lives 
with  a  great  awakening  light.""'  Though  Thoreau's  lofty 
language  has  found  it's  way  into  pop  psychology  and  the 
self-help  lexicon,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  genius,  even 
at  Its  most  pedantic  and  formalistic,  is  but  a  product  of  a 
mad  enthusiasm  for  understanding  nature. 


Notes 

^   Peter  A.  Fritzell,  Nature  Writing  and  America:  Essays  Upon  a  Cultural  Type. 

(Ames:  Iowa  State  University  Press,  1990),  16. 

^  Ibid. 

^  "By  inner  experience  I  understand  that  which  one  usually  calls  mystical  ex- 
perience: the  state  of  ecstasy,  or  rapture,  at  least  of  mediated  emotion.  But 
I  am  thinking  less  of  confessional  experience,  to  which  one  has  had  to  adhere 
up  to  now,  than  of  experience,  laid  bare,  free  of  ties,  even  of  origin,  of  any 
confession  whatever"  Georges  Bataille,  "Critique  of  dogmatic  servitude  (and 
of  mysticism)"  in  Inner  Experience,  tr  Leslie  A  Boldt.  (New  York:  S.U.NY 
Press.  1988).  3. 

Henry  David  Thoreau,  "Walking"  in  Walden  and  Other  Writings  of  Henry  David 
Ttioreau,  ed.  Brooks  Atkinson.   (New  York:  Modern  Library  1992),  627. 

^  Ibid ,  632 

''  Ibid..  637. 

'  Ibid..  645, 

^  Ibid..  649. 

'  Ibid..  650. 

'°  Ibid.,  657. 

^'  "Reading  itself  becomes  the  objective  and  starting  point,  the  end  and  begin- 
ning of  seeing  one's  way  more  clearly. ...Reading,  therefore,  does  not  simply 
mean  running  one's  eyes  over  pages  of  writing,  but  seeing  'more  clearly'  the 
relationship  between  one's  reading  of  books  and  one's  reading  of  landscape 
Reading  is  not  something  we  do  all  the  time  but  something  we  could  (and 
should)  do  more  often,  if  we  would  learn  to  see  differently."  T.S.  McMillm,  Our 
Preposterous  Use  of  Literature:  Emerson  and  the  Nature  of  Reading.  (Champaign: 
Univ.  of  Illinois  Press,  2000),  127-128. 

^^  Jaques  Derrida.  "Differance"  in  Margins  of  Philosophy,  tr  Alan  Bass.  (Chi- 
cago: University  of  Chicago  Press.  1982),  7. 

''  Thoreau,  656. 

^'^  Gilles  Deleuze  &  Felix  Guattan.  "Introduction:  Rhizome"  in  A  Thousand 
Plateaus:  Capitalism  and  Schizophrenia,  tr  Brian  Massumi.  (Minneapolis:  Uni- 
versity of  Minnesota  Press,  1987),  23. 


15 


Ibid..  12. 
Thoreau.  563, 


Marcus    7 


T.  Scott  McMillin 

The  Frolic  Architecture  of  Snow 

Building  on  Emerson's  Drift 


Emerson's  Drift 

"Extremes  meet,"  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  wrote  in  his 
journal  after  a  snowstorm  buried  Concord  m  December 
1834.  "Misfortunes  even  may  be  so  accumulated  as  to  be 
ludicrous.  To  be  shipwrecked  is  bad:  to  be  shipwrecked  on 
an  iceberg  is  horrible;  to  be  shipwrecked  on  an  iceberg  in  a 
snowstorm  confounds  us;  to  be  shipwrecked  on  an  iceberg 
m  a  storm  and  to  find  a  bear  on  the  snow  bank  to  dispute 
the  sailor's  landing  which  is  not  driven  away  till  he  has  bit- 
ten off  a  sailor's  arm,  is  rueful  to  laughter."'  The  extremes 
that  meet  through  compounding  coincidence  in  this  pas- 
sage -  "misfortunes"  (the  beginning)  and  "laughter"  (the 
end)  -  are  among  many  that  occupy  Emerson  in  his  writing. 
Readers  readily  encounter  such  pairs  of  seeming  extremes 
as  Old  World  and  New  World,  science  and  poetry,  spirit  and 
matter,  interior  and  exterior,  nature  and  culture.  Although 
we  might  question  Emerson's  sense  of  humor  (just  how 
laughable  is  it  to  have  one's  arm  removed  by  a  bear?),  the 
meeting  of  extremes  raises  some  important  questions.  In 
a  sense,  extremes  and  the  movement  between  them  —  and 
especially  the  space  between  what  we  tend  to  call  nature 
and  what  we  tend  to  call  culture  —  constitute  the  very  stuff 
of  this  issue  of  Thresholds.  They  are  as  well,  I  suggest,  one 
of  Emerson's  primary  concerns;  in  short,  they  amount  to 
Emerson's  drift. 

It  IS  a  simple  yet  complex  little  word,  drift.  I  used  it 
|ust  now  to  refer  to  the  "general  meaning"  of  Emerson's 
thought,  but  drift  also  means,  as  aviators  and  boaters 
know,  a  deviation  due  to  side  currents.  As  such,  it  could 
also  signify  the  ground  Emerson  covered  unintentionally, 
the  margin  into  which  he  veered  while  pursuing  his  course. 
By  definition,  "the  drift"  is  both  a  driving  and  a  being 
driven;  that  force  which  carries  things  along,  the  course 
over  which  things  are  carried,  and  the  things  themselves 
carried  and  deposited.  It  is  the  movement  of  a  creek,  last 
fall's  oak  leaves  carried  by  the  creek's  current,  and  the 
general  meaning  of  flowing  water.  In  a  poem  that  he  be- 
gan beneath  the  same  snowfall  during  which  he  recorded 


the  meeting  of  extremes,  Emerson  studies  another  form 
of  drifts.  The  poem,  titled  "The  Snow-Storm,"  was  first 
published  in  1841.  It  opens  with  the  poet  describing  the 
effects  of  the  storm  on  humans: 

Announced  by  all  the  trumpets  of  the  sky. 
Arrives  the  snow,  and,  driving  o'er  the  fields. 
Seems  nowhere  to  alight:  the  whited  air 
Hides  hills  and  woods,  the  river,  and  the  heaven. 
And  veils  the  farm-house  at  the  garden's  end. 
The  sled  and  traveller  stopped,  the  courier's  feet 
Delayed,  all  friends  shut  out,  the  housemates  sit 
Around  the  radiant  fireplace,  enclosed 
In  a  tumultuous  privacy  of  storm. 

Having  ensconced  the  housemates  around  the  hearth  and 
cut  them  off  from  the  fury  of  the  driving  snow,  the  poet 
next  takes  the  reader  on  a  tour  of  the  land  m  the  aftermath 
of  the  storm. 

Come  see  the  north  wind's  masonry. 

Out  of  an  unseen  quarry  evermore 

Furnished  with  tile,  the  fierce  artificer 

Curves  his  white  bastions  with  projected  roof 

Round  every  windward  stake,  or  tree,  or  door. 

Speeding,  the  myriad-handed,  his  wild  work 

So  fanciful,  so  savage,  naught  cares  he 

For  number  or  proportion.    Mockingly, 

On  coop  or  kennel  he  hangs  Parian  wreaths, 

A  swan-like  form  invests  the  hidden  thorn; 

Fills  up  the  farmer's  lane  from  wall  to  wall, 

Maugre  the  farmer's  sighs;  and,  at  the  gate, 

A  tapering  turret  overtops  the  work. 

And  when  his  hours  are  numbered,  and  the  world 

Is  all  his  own,  retiring,  as  he  were  not. 

Leaves,  when  the  sun  appears,  astonished  Art 

To  mimic  in  slow  structures,  stone  by  stone. 

Built  in  an  age,  the  mad  wind's  night-work, 

The  frolic  architecture  of  the  snow.' 

The  powerful  conclusion  provides  the  reader  with  an  image 
of  intricacy  on  which  to  meditate.  By  picturing  snow  as 
"frolic  architecture,"  Emerson  positions  nature  as  an  ar- 


8    McMillin 


1   Snow  crystals 


chitect,  a  "fierce  artificer."  as  he  puts  it.  Nature  designs; 
nature  builds.  Calling  the  architecture  "frolic"  accents  the 
concept  that  the  "astonished  Art"  results  from  "the  north 
wind's  masonry,"  "the  mad  wind's  night-work,"  depicting 
nature's  artistic  process,  at  least  m  this  instance,  as  a 
flurry  of  activity,  power,  movement,  drive.  Yet  the  art  pro- 
duced by  nature's  force  is  informed  more  by  mischievous 
humor  ("mocking,"  "mimic")  and  frolicking  whimsy  than 
by  deliberate  intent,  which  is  to  say  that  the  process  drifts. 
Both  driving  and  being  driven,  the  frolic  architect  works 
between  these  extremes. 

One  extension  of  the  drift  of  "The  Snow-Storm"  involves 
our  ability  to  understand  what  we  call  "nature."  "Frolic 
architecture"  connotes  a  playful  structure,  one  that  would 
make  its  inhabitants  and  on-lookers  merry  (and  here  I 
am  reminded  of  a  colleague,  a  professor  of  the  litera- 
ture of  American  Modernism,  who  once  dismissed  Peter 
Eisenman's  Wexner  Center  as  "a  funhouse").  Frolic  comes 
from  the  Dutch  word  vroolijk  ("joyously").^  The  poet  has 
been  made  joyous  by  the  wind's  random  design,  and  in 
this  joyousness  a  recent  biographer  finds  one  of  Emerson's 
"central  insights."     According  to  Robert  Richardson,  the 


key  idea  that  emerged  from  the  blizzard  of  1834  and  the 
poems  (especially  "The  Snow-Storm")  built  upon  that  idea 
entails  a  recognition  of  the  integral  relationship  between 
world  and  mind.^  "Frolic  architecture."  as  I  read  it.  high- 
lights the  connection  between  human  understanding  and 
the  world's  moment-by-moment  unfolding.  To  counter  the 
conceptual  drift  of  humans  away  from  nature,  Emerson,  in 
other  writings,  calls  attention  to  special  forms  of  patience 
and  interpretation.  Patience  and  interpretation  are  related 
to  what  I've  elsewhere  called  participance,  a  word  denot- 
ing a  heightened  form  of  participation  in  worldly  unfolding 
that  involves  facing  up  to  the  challenges  and  complexity 
of  life,  connecting  the  sundry  contexts  that  comprise  that 
complexity,  and  truly  taking  part  in  nature.  Only  by  tak- 
ing part  in  nature  can  we  begin  to  understand  nature  and 
ourselves.  That  is.  to  understand  nature's  drift  we  have  to 
understand  ourselves  as  belonging  to  it.- 

Another  extension  regards  "cultural"  activities  such  as  writ- 
ing, painting,  architecture,  philosophy,  etc.  In  addition  to 
joy  and  merrymaking,  frolic  connotes  a  sort  of  lively,  sport- 
ive movement  (including  "gamboling"  and  "capering  about" 
in  the  OED,  "leaping"  in  H^ebsfer's  New  World  Dictionary).  If, 
according  to  the  principle  of  participance,  a  primary  role 
of  the  poet  or  teacher  or  architect  is  to  serve  as  a  witness 
for  the  world's  unfolding  from  withiin  it,  to  highlight  human 
involvement  in  nature,  then  cultural  activities  must  be  seen 
as  occurring  under  the  drift  of  nature.  He  or  she  who  plies 
the  time-honored  craft  of  "furthering  culture,"  to  perform 
her  or  his  work  responsibly,  must  take  seriously  that  deep 
relation.  Doing  so  will  involve  something  like  frolicking 
-  moving  in  a  particular  sort  of  way  over  a  particular  sort 
of  ground,  moving  between  driving  and  being  driven. 


In-Betweenness,  Too-Muchness 

In  his  engaging  history  of  the  subject.  Bernard  Mergen 
writes  that  "The  various  attempts  to  name  and  define 
snow  illuminate  the  ways  nature  and  culture  interact."'' 
Mergen's  formulation  would  seem  to  suggest  that  nature 
and  culture  occupy  separate  states  that  sometimes  come 
into  contact,  and  then  further  that  snow  can  help  us 
understand  the  place  where  they  meet.  Building  off  of 
Emerson's  frolicsome  metaphor,  however,  we  can  be  led 
by  snow  to  rethink  the  conceptual  division  of  nature  and 
culture,  a  rethinking  with  which  Emerson  struggled  in  other 
works.'  To  take  up  that  struggle  is  to  explore  the  meaning 
of  "the  In-Between,"  the  zone  in  which  driving  and  being 
driven,  chaos  and  order,  nature  and  culture  do  and  do  not 
mix.  Such  exploration  is  by  nature  interpretive,  the  roots  of 
which  are  entangled  in  meaning  or  value  {-prat,  price)  and 
the  space-between  (inter-).     Interpretation  as  moving-be- 


McMillin     9 


tween  becomes  more  important  as  we  reveal  and  deal  with 
the  many  gaps  that  shape  our  experience  of  the  world  and 
that  often  undermine  our  communication  within  it. 

There  are  gaps  between  units  -  between  cultures,  between 
disciplines,  between  governments  and  the  governed;  there 
are  gaps  within  units  -  familial  (e.g.  between  generations), 
social  (between  genders,  classes,  "races"),  ecological 
(between  genera:  the  bird-nut  who  loads  seed  into  the 
bird-feeder/the  nuthatch  feeding).  There  are  temporal 
gaps  (between  "now,"  as  I  write  this,  and  now,  as  you  read 
it),  communication  gaps  (between  what  teachers  teach 
and  what  students  learn),  and  gaps  between  theory  and 
practice  (Entre  dicho  y  hecho  hay  gran  trecho).  "Gap"  can 
signify  a  breach,  hiatus,  cleavage,  difference,  a  lag,  open- 
ing, coming  apart,  a  space-between,  an  abyss,  an  interval, 
interruption  —  thus  there  is  a  gap  between  a  gap  that 
ever  remains  a  gap  and  a  gap  that  may  be  traversed.  It  is 
necessary  to  acknowledge  gaps  and  their  types  in  order  to 
respect  or  question,  build  upon  or  dismantle  them.  While 
Emerson's  "frolic  architecture"  alludes  to  the  In-Between. 
in  wasn't  until  a  decade  after  the  "The  Snow-Storm"  that 
he  considered  the  matter  at  length. 

In  Emerson's  English  Traits  (1856),  one  finds  a  disturbing 
(but  not  uncommon)  separation  of  nature  and  culture,  as 
well  as  a  fertile  troubling  of  that  separation.  The  gap  be- 
comes acutely  provocative  in  a  scene  from  "Stonehenge," 
the  sixteenth  of  nineteen  chapters.  Emerson  recalls  tour- 
ing the  countryside  with  Thomas  Carlyle,  clambering  about 
the  monoliths,  cigar  smoke,  cedars,  and  the  following  mo- 
ment of  disconnection: 

On  the  way  to  Winchester,  whither  our  host  accom- 
panied us  in  the  afternoon,  my  friends  asked  many 
questions  respecting  American  landscape,  forests, 
houses,  -  my  house,  for  example.  It  is  not  easy  to  an- 
swer these  queries  well.  There,  I  thought,  in  America, 
lies  nature  sleeping,  overgrowing,  almost  conscious, 
too  much  by  half  for  man  in  the  picture,  and  so  giv- 
ing a  certain  tristesse,  like  the  rank  vegetation  of 
swamps  and  forests  seen  at  night,  steeped  in  dews 
and  rains,  which  it  loves;  and  on  it  man  seems  not 
able  to  make  much  impression.  There,  in  that  great 
sloven  continent,  in  high  Alleghany  pastures,  in  the 
sea-wide  sky-skirted  prairie,  still  sleeps  and  murmurs 
and  hides  the  great  mother,  long  since  driven  away 
from  the  trim  hedge-rows  and  over-cultivated  garden 
of  England.  And,  in  England,  I  am  quite  too  sensible 
of  this.  Every  one  is  on  his  good  behavior  and  must 
be  dressed  for  dinner  at  six.  So  I  put  off  my  friends 
with  very  inadequate  details,  as  best  I  could."* 

In  this  rich  passage,  Emerson  posits  a  gap  wider  than  the 
Atlantic  between  England  and  America,  an  expanse  that 


overwhelms  the  speaker  and  debilitates  the  possibility  of 
answering  his  friends'  questions  about  where  he  resides. 

More  importantly,  the  American  scholar  in  England  de- 
scribes an  unfortunately  commonplace  gap  in  our  thinking 
of  nature's  nature.  For  the  Emerson  of  this  passage,  na- 
ture only  exists  in  overgrowth  and  swamps  and  forests  and 
prairies,  not  in  hedge-rows  or  gardens  or  hedge-trimmers 
or  gardeners.  America  consists  of  a  nature  on  which  hu- 
mans make  no  mark,  whereas  England's  cultivated  mark- 
ings have  blotted  out  any  signs  of  the  natural.  Put  simply, 
in  England  nature  has  been  overrun  by  culture.  Humans 
occupy  an  order  of  being  that  is  unnatural  or  extranatural, 
an  order  capable  of  chasing  away  nature  from  a  specific 
place.  In  America,  on  the  other  hand,  nature  persists  with 
a  certain  "too-muchness";  humans,  again  of  an  extra- 
natural  order,  are  incapable  of  "making  an  impression"  on 
nature  -  a  phrase  that  connotes  various  forms  of  culture. 
Culture,  this  excerpt  from  English  Traits  implies,  pertains 
to  the  ability  to  make  an  impression  on  nature,  whether  it 
be  agriculture  or  "high"  culture. 

Emerson's  experience  of  the  gap  between  England  and 
America  is  founded  upon  another  gap  -  a  divisive  view  of 
the  world  that  posits  a  significant  space  between  humans 
and  our  geobiotic  home.  In  failing  to  describe  his  home 
turf,  Emerson  symptomatizes  a  widespread  condition: 
alienation  from  nature.  While  the  condition  usually  entails 
a  physical  removal  and  resultant  separation  anxiety  (not 
unlike  18th-century  accounts  of  scurvy),  m  Emerson's 
case  it  IS  complicated  and  exacerbated  by  a  metaphysical 
disjunction.  We  are  estranged  from  nature,  not  because 
we  have  "driven  away"  the  "great  mother"  and  no  longer 
lie  cozily  in  her  arms,  but  because  of  our  doggedness  in 
intellectually  and  spiritually  separating  ourselves  from  our 
biotic  facts  of  life,  because  of  our  refusal  to  reckon  the 
interconnectedness  of  living  things,  the  ecology  even  of 
human  thinking,  the  often  beastly  unpleasant  yet  as  often 
unbearably  beautiful  nature  of  human  culture.  Alienated 
by  nature  (which  is  "too  much  by  half  for  man  in  the  pic- 
ture") and  from  nature  (having  traveled  from  the  "great 
sloven  continent"  to  the  "garden"),  Emerson  finds  himself 
at  a  loss  for  words. 

In  sum,  Emerson's  problem  in  this  passage  comes  from 
being  unable  to  translate  America  into  English  terms, 
a  condition  caused  by  the  inability  to  traverse  the  gap 
between  nature  and  culture.  Emerson,  that  is  to  say,  is 
caught  in  a  bind.  On  the  one  hand,  he  is  a  well-schooled, 
nicely  cultured,  articulate  English  descendant  whose  own 
rank  and  overgrowing  home  does  not  lend  itself  to  cultiva- 
tion and  thus  gives  him  "a  certain  tristesse."  On  the  other 
hand,  he  is  a  proud  product  of  "that  great  sloven  conti- 


10    McMillin 


2  Photographs  of  snow  crystals 

nent"  who  now  finds  himself  in  a  country  where  everyone 
must  be  well-behaved,  impeccably  mannered,  punctual, 
and  formally  dressed  for  dinner.  In  America,  the  cultivated 
Emerson  is  a  trifle  trepid  regarding  a  landscape  on  which 
humans  cannot  make  an  impression;  here  nature's  excess 
is  too  much  for  culture.  In  England,  he  is  "quite  too  sen- 
sible" of  the  over-cultivated  lay  of  the  land,  which  lacks  the 
grandeur,  opportunity,  immensity,  messmess,  and  purity  of 
the  "sea-wide  sky-skirted  prairie":  there,  culture  appears  to 
be  too  much  for  nature.  English  Traits  describes  Emerson's 
efforts  to  fathom  the  gap,  his  attempt  to  articulate  nature's 
Too-Muchness  with  adequate  details.  Such,  however,  being 
less  his  intention  than  it  is  his  drift,  the  book  itself  pres- 
ents a  lesson  in  nature's  excessive  primacy  and  capricious 
construction.  England,  according  to  Emerson's  account, 
has  failed  to  learn  that  lesson,  and  the  writer  expresses  his 
fears  that  America  will  too. 


change,  crotchety  positivism),  and  factitiousness.  Dualism 
separates  humans  from  nature,  thereby  delimiting  nature; 
fixity  further  delimits  nature  by  concretizing  duality  and 
imposing  an  unchanging  order  on  the  world's  observable 
flux.  As  such,  these  traits  would  appear  to  be  anti-nature 
or  unnatural.  But  these  traits,  Emerson  suggests,  may 
have  arisen  naturally.  He  points  out  that  it  is  English  nature 
to  take  culture  kindly,  but  suggests  that  English  culture 
does  not  return  the  favor  by  taking  nature  kindly.  Instead, 
nature  is  posited  by  the  English  as  something  separate, 
something  other,  to  be  surmounted.  English  culture,  by 
nature,  is  based  on  and  strives  to  maintain  factitiousness 
-  a  condition  in  which  artifice,  propriety,  and  convention 
hold  dominion  over  nature,  spontaneity,  and  change. 

Emerson  portrays  England  by  turns  as  a  "museum,"  a 
"garden,"  "strongbox,"  etc.,  treating  the  island  as  a  nurs- 
ery specializing  in  factitious  growth.  If  in  England  art  is 
seen  to  vanquish  nature,  and  "the  views  of  nature  held  by 
any  people  determine  all  of  their  institutions,"  it  follows 
that  English  institutions  are  built  upon  artificial  principles, 
thereby  giving  rise  to  "an  artificial  completeness  in  this 
nation  of  artificers."'  The  term  "factitious"  itself  occu- 
pies a  special  status  in  the  book,  occurring  in  chapters 
on  "Land"  and  on  "Literature"  and  even  serving  as  a 
page-header  in  a  chapter  on  "Ability."  No  where  else  in 
Emerson's  published  writings  does  "factitious"  enjoy  such 
prominence,  as  if  treating  the  English  especially  warranted 
its  use.  The  word's  contemporary  meaning,  as  denoted  in 
the  Webster's  of  Emerson's  day  {American  Dictionary  at  the 
English  Language  [1828-1853])  -  "Made  by  art,  in  distinc- 
tion from  what  is  produced  by  nature;  artificial"  -  indicates 
that  perhaps  the  central  trait  of  the  English  is  their  cultural 
denial  of  nature. 

Distinguishing  between  what  is  made  by  nature  and  what  is 
made  by  human  artifice,  the  American  condemns  the  Brit- 
ish for  putting  their  chips  with  the  artificial. 

In  the  absence  of  the  highest  aims,  of  the  pure  love 
of  knowledge  and  the  surrender  to  nature,  there  is  the 
suppression  of  the  imagination,  the  priapism  of  the 
senses  and  the  understanding;  we  have  the  factitious 
instead  of  the  natural;  tasteless  expense,  arts  of  com- 
fort, and  the  rewarding  as  an  illustrious  inventor  who- 
soever will  contrive  one  impediment  more  to  interpose 
between  the  man  and  his  objects.'" 


Factitiousness,  Onwardness 

Throughout  his  travelogue  and  cultural  critique.  Emerson 
attends  to  three  key  characteristics  of  British  world- 
making:  duality  (division  of  the  world  into  fundamental 
antagonisms),  fixity  (intellectual   insularity,   resistance  to 


A  small  paragraph  by  Emersonian  standards,  its  three 
clauses  represent  m  fine  Emerson's  findings  on  the  issue  at 
hand  (the  English  literary  scene)  and  on  the  larger  issue  to 
which  it  belongs  (English  traits  in  general).  It  is  a  terse  di- 
agnosis of  British  disease,  pivoting  on  the  laconic  second 
clause:  "we  have  the  factitious  instead  of  the  natural." 


McMillin     1 1 


This,  really,  is  the  heart  of  the  matter,  the  primary  pathol- 
ogy, of  which  the  surrounding  traits  are  symptoms.  The 
consumption  of  luxuries,  of  goods  and  services  to  satisfy 
artificial  desires,  results  from  an  economic  system  itself 
the  product  of  false  principles.  These  goods  and  services 
supply  unnatural  comfort  that  inevitably  fails  to  provide 
for  underlying  needs  (human  "necessaries,"  in  Thoreau's 
terms),  and  instead  exacerbate  the  condition.  By  valuing 
"arts  of  comfort,"  the  British  economic  system  puts  im- 
pediments between  subjects  and  objects,  thereby  aggravat- 
ing the  perceived  disconnection  between  humans  and  the 
world.  Nature  having  been  denied,  artifice  becomes  the 
norm.  Cut  off  from  nature  and  thus  the  nature  of  things, 
the  British  indulge  themselves  in  "tasteless  expense"  on 
artificial  things,  a  cure  that  makes  them  worse.  The  lack 
of  a  connection  with  nature  -  a  perceptual  "nature-less- 
ness"  -  cannot  be  satisfied  by  the  consumption  of  artifice. 
Unable  to  get  satisfaction,  the  British  become  "Priapists," 
prostitutes  to  "what  is  low  or  base,"  as  the  OED  states,  us- 
ing the  phrase  from  Emerson's  paragraph  as  example:  but 
it  also  connotes  (m  Webster's  American  Dictionary  of  the 
period)  "More  or  less  permanent  erection  and  rigidity  of 
the  penis,  without  concupiscence":  unfulfillable  drives,  un- 
natural manliness,  day-in-and-day-out  carnality,  a  constant 
itch  never  sufficiently  scratched. 

Linking  priapism  to  the  senses  and  the  understanding,  Em- 
erson's critical  diagnosis  explains  British  factitiousness  as 
perpetually  materialistic,  rigidly  uncreative,  insatiably  em- 
pirical. It  IS  worth  noting  again  the  first  clause  of  the  pas- 
sage, which  implies  the  writer's  propositions  for  improved 
prospects:  "highest  aims, ...the  pure  love  of  knowledge 
and  the  surrender  to  nature,  [and]. ..imagination."  Unfor- 
tunately absent  from  English  traits,  the  items  listed  fuse 
philosophy,  nature,  and  creativity,  implying  that  the  answer 
to  our  conditions  (on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic)  lies  pre- 
cisely in  their  integration.  Human  intellectual  endeavor, 
especially  that  which  pertains  to  the  imaginative  and  the 
philosophical,  often  serves  as  the  marker  of  our  separa- 
tion from  nature,  but  Emerson  aligns  that  endeavor  with 
"surrender  to  nature"  in  the  paragraph,  against  sensorial 
priapism,  experiential  impediments,  superfluous  comforts, 
and  the  factitious.  Surrender  to  nature  becomes  some- 
thing of  a  key  to  overcoming  factitiousness.  This  does  not 
appear  to  mean  a  surrender  to  carnality,  to  the  senses  and 
the  understanding,  though  these  must  have  some  share 
in  the  natural.  Priapism  -  the  unnaturally  exaggerated 
excitation  of  these  faculties  -  leads  us  astray  because  it 
IS  coupled  neither  with  higher  aims  nor  with  a  surrender 
to  nature.  Emerson  advocates  rethinking  what  is  and  is 
not  natural,  a  rethinking  driven  by  nature  and  imagination. 
Philosophical  and  imaginative  thinking  not  grounded  in  na- 
ture fails  to  go  forward:  doing  what  comes  naturally,  when 


3  Photographs  of  snow  crystals 

not  considered  in  conjunction  with  imaginative  renderings 
of  nature,  stagnates  in  an  artificial  swamp. 

"Surrender  to  nature"  can  indicate  either  yielding  to  an 
opposing  force  (as  in  surrendering  culture  to  nature)  or 
giving  way  to  something  already  at  work  within  and  about 
one.  This  latter  entails  understanding  ourselves  as  caught 
up  in  nature's  drift:  reckoning  that  which  is  always-already 
at  work  in  and  on  us,  becoming  aware  of  its  existence  and 
acknowledging  its  various  manifestations,  relations,  and 
meanings,  and  allowing  nature  to  do  what  it  does,  accept- 
ing and  working  with  the  consequences.  The  first  version 
of  surrender  reflects  the  British  version  of  nature-as-other; 
the  second  stems  from  the  paradox  with  which  Emerson 
operates  throughout  English  Traits:  the  British  treat  nature 
as  other  due  to  their  nature.  It  is  natural  for  the  English 
to  be  factitious.  The  paradox  may  explain  why  Emerson 
in  "Stonehenge"  "put  off  my  friends  with  very  inadequate 
details,  as  best  I  could." 

In  that  passage,  the  writer  doubts  his  ability  to  communi- 
cate the  American  condition,  not  because  he's  simply  on 
the  side  of  nature  in  the  nature  v.  culture  war,  but  rather  be- 
cause he  suspects  himself  to  function  in  the  gap  between 


12     McMillin 


nature  and  culture,  always  natural,  even  when  cultural,  and 
even  when  his  cultural  heritage  claims  extra-natural  status. 
How  else  but  inadequately  could  one  explain  the  gap  and 
the  relations  it  governs  to  those  firmly  bred  in  factitious- 
ness?  To  do  so  adequately  is  to  keep  alive  the  movement 
between  the  natural  and  the  cultural  -  which  movement 
IS  after  all  (and  above  all)  natural.  Advocating  the  natural 
against  the  cultural  -  as  something  separate  and  superior 
-  maintains  an  oceanic  separation  between  the  two,  in  the 
grandest  tradition  of  dualism,  fixity,  and  factitiousness. 
Only  by  surrendering  to  nature's  toomuchness  -  admitting 
the  complexity  and  flux  and  fugacity  of  each  moment  and 
our  reckoning  of  it  -  can  we  move  onward  from  the  limited 
and  limiting  concepts  of  "nature"  and  "culture"  that  per- 
vade the  nature  of  our  culture  as  it  has  evolved. 

Yet  it  IS  also  in  our  nature  to  resist  rather  than  capitulate. 
If  we  do  not  reckon  that  fact  of  nature,  we  fall  into  the 
same  old  gaps.  I  take  this  to  be  the  crux  of  Emerson's 
difficulties  on  the  road  to  Winchester.  The  lesson  of  the 
"Stonehenge"  chapter  is  that  the  chapter  itself,  like  the 
architectural  structure  from  which  it  takes  its  name,  is  a 
natural  expression.  Nature,  always  too  much  by  half  for 
humans  in  the  picture,  leaves  no  room  for  cultural  activity 
(making  an  impression)  to  occur  outside  of  nature.  By 
remarking  and  resisting  the  cultural  tendency  to  privilege 
itself  in  a  hierarchical  binary  with  nature  and  insisting 
instead  that  nature  is  too  much  for  the  binary  to  hold,  Em- 
erson suggests  that  nature  constructs  the  gap  between  our 
concept  of  nature  and  our  concept  of  culture.  In  the  con- 
cluding paragraph  of  the  book,  the  writer  surmises  that 
the  best  prospects  for  propagating  the  most  congenial  of 
English  traits  (e.g.,  courage,  strength,  thoughtfulness,  gen- 
erosity) lie  in  human  "elasticity  and  hope"  -  that  is  to  say, 
in  moving  beyond  the  least  congenial  of  English  traits  (fix- 
ity, insularity,  duality,  etc.).  Hope  flourishes  in  our  flexible 
and  self-reflexive  participation  in  the  flux  of  things,  in  our 
surrender  to  nature's  perpetual  excess  and  procession,  in 
our  "wising  up"  to  the  story  of  evolution."  There  is  a  gap 
between  what  we  think  nature  is  and  what  nature  is.  But 
"what  we  think  nature  is"  is  entirely  natural  also,  a  product 
of  nature,  an  instance  of  nature  thinking.  To  speak  of  a 
gap  between  nature  and  culture  is  not  to  speak  of  a  "rift." 
The  gap  is  the  drift  on  which  we  must  build. 


4  Snow  on  lawn  installation,  January  2003 


Notes 

^  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  vol.  IV  of  The  Journals  and  Miscellaneous  Notebooks 
of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  edited  by  William  Gllman  et  al.  (Cambridge:  Harvard 
University  Press,  1964),  383. 

^  Ralpti  Waldo  Emerson,  Poems,  vol.  IX  of  the  Riverside  Standard  Library  Edition 
of  The  Works  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  edited  by  James  Elliot  Cabot  (Boston: 
Houghton,  Mifflin  and  Co..  1884).  42-3, 

For  etymological  information,  see  C.T.  Onions's  The  Oxford  Dictionary  of  English 
ftymo/ogy  (Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  1966)  and  Eric  Partridge's  Origins: 
The  Encyclopedia  of  Words  (New  York:  The  Macmillan  Company,  1958). 

Robert  D.  Richardson  Jr.,  Emerson:  The  Mind  on  F/re  (Berkeley:  University  of 
California  Press,  1995),  179:  "The  world  itself  is  the  great  poem,  the  source  of 
all  the  verbal  approximations  of  itself  When  the  poet  can  hold  fast  to  this  con- 
nection, he  has  access — through  his  own  poor  powers — to  the  world's  power 
and  beauty.   This  is  one  of  the  central  insights  of  Emerson's  life." 

^  For  more  on  "participance,"  see  the  chapter  "Toward  a  Natural  Philosophy  of 
Reading"  in  Our  Preposterous  Use  of  Literature:  Emerson  and  the  Nature  of  Read- 
ing (Urbana:  University  of  Illinois  Press.  2000). 

Bernard  Mergen.  Snow  in  America  (Washington  DC:  Smithsonian  Institution. 
1997).  IX, 

^  Mergen,  I  think,  is  not  averse  to  this  line  of  thinking,  though  he  does  not  fol- 
low it  very  far  Calling  Emerson  "the  most  serious  of  the  early  philosophers  of 
snow,"  he  reads  the  poem  in  question  as  finding  "in  a  New  England  snowstorm 
a  primordial  force  that  Is  neither  rational  or  serious.  Although  [Emerson]  be- 
gins conventionally,  using  the  storm  as  a  screen  between  humanity  and  nature, 
order  and  disorder,  .  .  .  [the  poem]  forces  the  reader  to  see  that  behind  the 
apparent  order  of  nature  lies  chaos.  .  ."  (10  1). 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  English  Traits,  vol.  V  of  the  Riverside  Standard  Library 
Edition  of  The  Works  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  ed.  by  James  Elliot  Cabot  (Boston: 
Houghton,  Mifflin  and  Co.,  1884),  273-4. 

'  English  Traits.  52  and  45. 

'°  English  Traits.  242. 

^^  Loyal  Rue,  Everybody's  Story:  Wising  Up  to  the  Epic  of  Evolution  (Albany,  NY: 
State  University  of  New  York  Press,  2000). 


McMillin     13 


Nataly  Gattegno 

Desert  Oasis 


Flatness  and  endless  sprawl,  the  grid  mapped  out  on  the 
land  prohibiting  any  understanding  of  what  lies  beneath. 
Suburbia  blankets  the  sand,  perpetuating  the  grid  with 
artificial  pockets  of  life  -  or  Is  it  lifestyle?  It  is  this  lifestyle 
that  generates  the  air-conditioned  households,  the  luxuri- 
ous cars,  and  the  green  golf  courses  in  the  midst  of  what 
should  be  the  most  inclement  and  inhibiting  environment. 
In  the  distance,  thousands  of  wind  turbines  spin  away,  fu- 
elling the  human  need  to  defy  nature.  With  few  exceptions, 
desert  architecture  has  negated  context,  has  negated  its 
ability  to  transform  and  adapt  according  to  local  needs 
and  parameters.  What  lies  beneath  should  be  interpreted 
as  "context,"  as  a  dynamic  ecological  matrix  that  affects 
architecture,  planning,  and  form.  What  lies  beneath  should 
affect  what  exists  above;  it  should  foster  an  adaptive  and 
hybrid  environment  that  enables  the  disparate  needs  of 
humans  to  coexist. 

This  project  investigates  the  possibilities  of  a  fully  con- 
textual architecture,  one  that  exists  as  part  of  a  given  set 
of  parameters  and  is  simultaneously  a  product  of  them. 
It  explores  the  potential  of  context  to  be  a  generative  pa- 
rameter for  the  development  of  an  inhabitable  region  in 
the  desert.  The  site  of  the  Californian  desert  becomes  a 
fertile  landscape  to  be  reaped  for  its  ability  to  cultivate  a 
desert  oasis. 

Oasis:  "A  fertile  tract  of  land  ttiat  occurs  in  a  desert  wherever  a 
perennial  supply  of  water  is  available. "' 

Context  IS  interpreted  as  the  multitude  of  forces  that  act 
on  a  site  from  its  surroundings  and  its  ground.  A  dynamic 
geological  matrix  is  created,  one  that  defines  the  param 
eters  to  which  a  desert  settlement  has  to  be  adapted  and 
transformed.  An  underlying  geological  system  of  forces  is 
defined,  one  that  supercedes  the  standard  logic  of  subur- 
ban development  and  allows  for  its  remterpretation. 


1  Sand  Studies  and  2  (opposite)  Hazard  Mapping 
14     Gattegno 


I'camnalaull 


'inlssloncnielilaull 


UNDERLYING  SYSTEM 


mill)  morongo  wash 


M  desert  hot  springs 

nniracleliilllHit 


mission  cfBoli 

j  tanning  fault  Isan  andreasl 

I  north  palm  springs. 

I I  morongo  wash 

iigainetmillault  


1 1  west  branch  svMa  wash 


I  santh  pass  fault  - 
Iwhltawaterwash 


110 

annratstaitoi 

tianutl  

Mlanne  — 
vista  chino  


mnnldnal  almn  - 

springs- 


•  palm  cannon  wssfr 


I  mile 

I 1 


Gattegno  15 


3  Mapping  the  Suburban  Grid  (above)  and  4  Sand  Dune  Formation  System  (below) 


DUNE  FORMATION 


/ 


mission  creek  tault  sHStem 
san  andreas  laoll  svslem 


algodones  dunes 


■^ 


wRliewater  riwer  Hood  plain 


I  san  goraonio  oass 


I  :  average  wind  speed^  8  5m/sBC 
=  6 


:  largest  tract  ol  desert  dunes  In  N.llmerlGa 
:  mlBratiRo  Southeast  as  mocb  as  Sm/vear 
:  130  000  cubic  vards  ol  sand  transported 
annuallv 


4000  lurtiines 


'consistently  the  windiest  potni  In 
Nonii  America'  HBSB 


wind  power  =  700  Wm2  $l2mll  lai  credit 

wind  speed  =  8  5  m/sec  S4.2mil  prooenu  lax  revenues 

2105  ioD-years  ol  employmenl 

B09kWn  S40mli  energy 

421 1 MW  wind  capacitv  energy  ^  1  Oinii  barrels  ot  oil 


power  120  000  housenolds  /  year  4400.000  ions  ol  CO?  Igreenhouse  ettecti 

power  the  whole  Coachelia  Valley         1.5D0  000  acres  ot  torest 


24  000  tons  ol  sulfur  dioilde  lacld  ralnl 
16  000  tons  ol  nlirogen  oilde  Ismogi 


satisfy 300.000 peoples  needs  occupy  21.0S5 acres 

use  1053  acres  ISM 


1 6     Gattegno 


The  site  is  located  to  the  north  of  Palm  Springs  in  an 
area  soon  to  be  developed  into  another  suburb  for  young 
getaway  seekers  and  retirees.  Straddling  the  San  Andreas 
fault  line,  and  located  on  the  Whitewater  River  flood  plain, 
this  geologically  charged  site  is  located  in  one  of  the  larg- 
est wind  fields  in  North  America.  The  hazard  mapping 
diagram  (Figure  2)  generates  a  new  zoning  plan  that  is 
directly  related  to  the  contextual  phenomena  of  the  site: 
the  fault  lines,  flood  planes,  ground  condition  etc.  It  begins 
to  lay  out  the  boundaries  of  a  new  territory  to  be  inhabited 
by  the  desert  oasis,  a  territory  that  is  marked  out  by  an 
optimal  set  of  contextual  conditions. 

The  Windy  Point  wind  farm  is  "consistently  the  windiest 
point  in  North  America."^  Four  thousand  turbines  produce 
805  KWh  of  energy  in  order  to  power  120,000  households 
a  year,  essentially  the  whole  of  the  Coachella  Valley.  Ac- 
cording to  environmental  data  (Figure  4),  they  produce  the 
equivalent  of  1.8  million  barrels  of  oil  per  year  ($40  mil- 
lion of  energy)  and  save  1,500,000  acres  of  forest  land. 
This  wind  farm  occupies  an  area  of  21,055  acres,  yet  it 
consumes  only  1,053  acres.  The  remaining  20,002  acres 
remain  undeveloped.  This  project  occupies  the  underuti- 
lized area  beneath  the  wind  field,  reclaiming  the  land  and 
proposing  a  techno/natural  oasis  that  will  coexist  with  the 
energy  source  and  reap  the  site's  latent  energies  in  order 
to  produce  a  "habitat,"  an  "oasis." 

Through  a  process  of  analyzing  the  forces  and  parameters 
affecting  the  site,  the  notion  of  context  is  transformed  into 
a  dynamic  matrix  capable  of  influencing  the  organization 
of  an  urban  settlement.  This  multidimensional  diagram 
encompasses  a  complex  set  of  ecological  movements  and 
patterns  that  are  site-specific:  weather,  water,  sun,  air,  fault 
lines,  and  sand.  This  proposal  explores  the  possibility  of 
a  fully  adaptive  organization  capable  of  addressing  these 
multi-scalar  phenomena;  it  conceives  of  a  transformable 
environment  able  to  optimally  locate  itself  and  grow  ac 
cording  to  a  given  set  of  parameters  defined  by  context 
Water  in  the  standard  oasis  is  translated  here  into  energy, 
wind,  movement,  sun  and  sand.  The  design  process  trans 
forms  itself  into  a  complex  negotiation  between  all  param 
eters  that  affect  the  site. 

The  project  is  a  windbreaker,  a  barrier  in  the  landscape 
that  filters  sand  and  wind.  The  oasis  is  generated  like  a 
sand  dune:  shaped,  located,  and  moved  according  to  exist- 
ing forces  (Figure  1).  A  new  inhabitable  region  is  generated 
behind  the  protective  boundary.  The  windbreaker  locates 
itself  on  a  desert  flood  plane,  allowing  a  fertile  tract  of 
land  to  seasonally  develop.  It  is  a  permeable  barrier  per- 
mitting the  coexistence  of  the  desert  sand  with  the  oasis. 


Synthesis:  "...something  different,  much  more  complex  but 
more  natural.  It  is  the  relationship  between  an  element  and  the 
system  to  which  it  belongs. "-' 

In  the  midst  of  one  of  the  newest  suburban  sprawls  in  the 
Coachella  Valley,  it  is  impossible  to  ignore  the  economic 
forces  and  the  current  direction  of  certain  financially  vi- 
able developments  in  the  area.  The  idyllic  and  artificial 
landscapes  sought  by  local  developers  prove  to  be  a  strong 
opposition.  This  methodology  explores  these  forces  at  their 
systemic  level  and  assimilates  them  as  powerful  contex- 
tual components  that  affect  the  program  of  the  oasis.  The 
distinction  that  the  grid  lays  down  between  the  artificial 
and  the  natural  is  broken  down  by  introducing  a  mediator 
in  the  form  of  an  oasis,  offering  a  different  interpretation 
of  suburbia  (Figure  3),  one  that  is  dependent  on  context, 
the  movement  of  sand,  the  prevailing  wind,  and  the  loca- 
tion of  water  This  proposal  explores  the  technological,  the 
natural,  and  the  suburban  as  "petri  sets"  (Figure  8).  They 
become  distinct  sets  of  information  to  be  recombmed  and 
reconfigured  -  ultimately  to  be  tested  against  each  other 
and  grafted  onto  one  another  A  new  productive  "synthesis" 
IS  explored,  one  that  addresses  the  possibility  of  a  hybrid 
condition  to  exist  as  a  result  of  a  complex  set  of  systems 
interacting  and  affecting  one  another. 

A  new  narrative  emerges  that  describes  the  process  of 
development  of  this  oasis.  This  narrative  becomes  the 
methodology  itself.  It  starts  with  the  location  of  the  wind- 
breakers  in  the  wind  field  (Figure  5).  Protected  areas  are 
developed  behind  these  barriers  and  according  to  the  lo- 
cal conditions  of  windy  and  still,  wet  and  dry,  south-  and 
north-facing,  the  petri  sets  are  mapped  on  the  landscape. 
Seasonal  pools,  a  golf  course,  housing  lots,  solar  fields, 
paths,  and  transportation  routes  are  located  on  the  desert 
landscape.  This  organization  continues  to  grow  until  the 
extent  of  protected  landscape  is  diminished  (Figure  6). 

The  environment  developed  behind  the  windbreaker  is  a 
hybrid  environment,  one  that  mediates  the  different  com- 
ponents of  suburban  living,  technology,  and  nature,  allow- 
ing for  a  simultaneous  coexistence  of  all  distinct  elements. 
The  living  environment  becomes  interlaced  with  the  energy 
field  (Figure  7).  The  artificiality  of  desert  suburbia  is  still 
retained,  but  the  elements  that  constitute  it  are  hybridized 
with  those  of  the  more  techno/natural  environment  of  the 
wind  farm,  the  solar  field,  and  the  desert  sand  (Figure  9). 

Meshworks:  "Unplanned  and  planned  cities  are  concrete 
instances  of  a  more  general  distinction:  self  organized  mesh- 
works of  diverse  elements,  versus  hierarchies  of  uniform  ele- 
ments. "■* 


Gattegno  1 7 


The  emergent  pattern  allows  for  a  degree  of  inhabitation 
and  a  type  of  programming  that  are  unique  to  each  en- 
vironment that  is  generated.  A  new  type  of  "vernacular" 
emerges  -  one  that  is  responsive  and  adaptive  to  the  local 
environment  and  becomes  part  of  the  ecological  matrix 
from  which  it  evolves.  Context  is  reinterpreted  as  a  matrix; 
a  "meshwork."  This  meshwork  of  parameters  and  forces 
generates  a  pattern  that  develops  and  transforms  in  time 
according  to  the  dynamics  of  each  site.  Boundaries  are 
blurred  between  the  technological  and  the  natural,  the 
man-made  and  the  artificial,  the  artificial  and  the  me- 
chanic. The  desert  oasis  is  capable  of  being  artificial  in 
its  development,  natural  in  its  adaptability,  man-made  in 
terms  of  its  technology  -  yet  fully  contextualized. 


Notes 

1  Oxford  English  Dictionary  (Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  1988). 

2  NASA,  hittp://www.palmsprings.com/5ervlces/wind.titml,  tittp:// 
www.nasa.gov.  Marcti  2003. 

3  C.A.Doxiadis,  Elements  of  Ekistics.  tittp://www.doxiadis.org.  Marcti  2003. 

4  Manuel  de  Landa,  A  Thousand  Years  of  Non  Linear  History  (New  York:  Zone 
Books,  1997). 


5    Desert  Oasis:  Phasing 


it^^ 


>  ,>«^  ^mvr^^%»^    jf' 


„'<" 


1'  i.'^t*'  ,.  v^,'' 


1 8     Gatfegno 


'  >t 


'til, 


6  Desert  Oasis:  Exploded  Axonimetric 


Gattegno  1  9 


SUBURBAN  PETRI  SETS 


.5 


43 

H 

n 


7  Wind  +  Sun  +  Water  +  Green  (top)  and  8  Suburban  Petri  Dishes 


20     Gattegno 


9  Desert  Oasis;  Marking  the  Ground 


Gatlegno  2 1 


Christine  Cerqueira  Caspar 

From  Alienated  to  Aleatory 

Nature  in  the  Post-Post-Modern  World 


if  architecture  is  a  means  of  positing  our  relationship  to 
the  larger  world,  historically,  that  relationship  is  one  of  a 
strong  separation  between  culture  and  nature.  Nature  is 
either  separated  from  culture  as  "other"  and  assigned  a 
place  in  "wilderness,"  away  from  here,  where  we  live  and 
build,  and  consequently  subjected  to  nostalgia  and  roman- 
ticism; or  it  is  detached  from  its  metaphysical  meaning  and 
seen  as  scientific  phenomena,  essentially  the  weather. 

I  argue  here  that  this  condition  is  a  holdover  from  the 
empiricist  worldview  of  the  Enlightenment,  and  that  con- 
temporary sciences  -  though  outgrowths  from  the  Enlight- 
enment model  of  knowing  -  offer  new  models  for  under- 
standing the  world,  models  that  have  yet  to  be  more  than 
superficially  addressed  in  architecture  and  urbanism. 


Enlightenment  Science 

Human  history  is  often  characterized  as  the  progres- 
sion of  the  species'  ability  to  control  and  manipulate  its 
environments,  often  with  the  assistance  of  increasingly 
sophisticated  technologies.  Typically,  the  image  of  the 
environment  is  characterized  as  "nature,"  while  the  tools 
and  products  of  our  manipulation  are  characterized  as 
"culture." 

The  philosophies  of  the  Enlightenment,  which  profoundly 
shaped  the  values  and  beliefs  of  Modernity,  bifurcated  the 
world  into  these  dichotomies.  The  leaps  in  the  sciences 
of  the  17th  century  created  a  firm  belief  in  man's  ability 
to  understand  and  categorize  the  world,  thus  enforcing 
the  idea  of  an  objective,  knowable,  scientific  reality  and 
effectively  replacing  God  with  Newton.  With  that  came  a 
preferencing  of  reason  and  the  mind  over  physicality  and 
the  body;  rationality  and  logic  over  religion  and  spiritual- 
ity; the  empirical  and  quantifiable  over  the  intuitive  and 
qualitative;  culture  and  the  man-made  over  "nature"  and 
the  uncontrolled.' 


The  basis  of  this  thought  in  science  is  particularly  interest- 
ing today,  as  the  fundamental  tenets  of  the  Enlightenment 
have  been  largely  subverted  by  the  scientific  proposi- 
tions of  the  last  century.  The  discovery  of  Heisenberg's 
uncertainty  principle  leveled  a  blow  to  the  notion  of  a 
correct,  scientifically  observable  reality.  The  observer,  we 
know  now,  is  deeply  implicated  in  shaping  the  reality  he 
observes.  While  in  the  Enlightenment,  man  was  subject 
(the  being  with  agency)  and  nature  his  object,  Heisenberg 
shows  us  the  messmess  of  the  simultaneity  of  subject  and 
object  (an  actor  as  both  acting  upon  and  being  acted  upon 
by  a  system),  thus  fundamentally  discrediting  the  clean 
bifurcation  of  scientist  and  particles.  Einstein's  work 
in  relativity  further  suggests  the  very  subjectivity  of  our 
perceptions  of  the  world,  revealing  the  multiplicity  of  even 
time  itself.^ 

Next,  chaos  theory,  which  deals  not  with  disorder  but 
rather  complex  orders  and  our  ability  to  predict  and  recog- 
nize them,  showed  "nature"  to  neither  be  simply  ordered, 
as  many  Enlightenment  scientists  believed,  nor  completely 
disordered,  as  many  Romantic  thinkers  believed.  In  fact, 
the  scientific  developments  of  the  last  100  years  have 
shown  the  man-made  world  to  be  less  and  less  different 
than  the  "natural"  world  to  which  it  has  been  traditionally 
opposed. 

Ironically,  physicists  themselves  no  longer  believe  in 
the  solid,  deterministic,  clockwork  universe  that  gave 
such  support  to  the  [Enlightenment]  paradigm.  In  its 
place  they  have  created  a  world  in  which  space  and 
time  depend  on  the  observer,  m  which  certain  proper- 
ties exist  only  when  we  measure  them,  in  which  one 
part  of  the  theory  insists  that  particles  that  are  far 
apart  cannot  communicate  instantaneously  and  an- 
other part  contains  results  that  cannot  be  explained 
unless  they  do,  and  so  on.^ 


22     Caspar 


Enlightenment  Nature 

Despite  the  complexities  quantum  physics  has  thrown  Into 
the  equation,  the  opposition  of  culture  and  nature  is  fun- 
damentally operative  In  the  Western  world,  and  in  its  own 
particular  form  in  the  United  States.  As  with  any  deep- 
held  cultural  belief,  it  is  evidenced  in  the  way  that  we  build. 
If  buildings  can  be  read  as  a  positing  of  humans'  relation- 
ship to  the  larger  world  around  them,  than  our  buildings 
reveal  an  intellectual  distancing  of  humans  from  the  larger 
world  of  the  processes  of  life,  of  the  other  worlds  that  we 
live  in  beyond  the  merely  cultural. 

Every  act  of  construction  and  planning  puts  forth  some 
idea  about  the  relationship  of  building  and  "nature," 
whether  intentional  or  not.  As  Leo  Marx  explains  in  The 
Machine  in  the  Garden,  the  development  of  American 
suburbia  is  very  much  a  product  of  this  world  view.  Para- 
phrasing him,  Diana  Agrest  states;  "The  development  of 
the  American  city  can  be  explained  through  the  opposition 
between  nature  and  culture,  wilderness  and  city."" 

The  development  of  cities  and  architecture  from  the  be- 
ginning has  been  an  effort  to  protect  the  body  from  the 
elements.  The  city  as  fort  becomes  the  more  refined, 
but  still  well-fortified,  Victorian  city.  During  the  Romantic 
period  -  coincident  with  the  Industrial  Revolution  and  the 
burgeoning  presence  of  machines,  mechanization,  and 
ideologies  of  control  and  predictability  m  Western  culture 
-  "nature"  began  to  seem  more  benign  and  controllable, 
and  a  new,  nostalgic,  aestheticized  view  of  it  emerged;  one 
much  in  evidence  in  the  landscape  paintings  of  the  day 
and  the  gardens  and  parks  they  inspired.  In  the  Americas, 
the  abundance  of  land  introduced  other  elements  into  the 
relationship.  According  to  Leo  Marx,  the  development  of 
American  suburbia  stems  from  the  search  for  a  middle 
landscape  between  this  newly  tamed  nature  and  the  tradi- 
tionally sheltering  urban  environment,  site  of  culture  and 
refinement.  The  result,  many  have  argued,  is  a  placeless 
middle  ground  "that  although  ideally  aimed  at  combining 
the  qualities  of  city  and  countryside,  ultimately  cancels 
out  both  worlds:  a  homogenized  and  consequently  denatu- 
ralized, disqualified  landscape."^ 

Once  the  middle  ground  was  built  upon,  the  man-made 
soon  replaced  "nature"  in  that  location,  pushing  "nature's" 
territory  further  and  further  from  the  city  until  we  again 
viewed  all  sites  of  construction  as  the  man-made  world 
and  the  distant,  "undisturbed"  "wilderness"  as  the  only 
remaining  site  of  "nature,"  this  time  with  a  new  nostalgia 
attached  to  its  diminishing  presence.  By  pushing  nature 
outside  the  built  environment  in  this  way,  we  deny  the  city 
any  relationship  to  (or  within)  it.  The  preservation  of  "na- 
ture" in  remote  landscapes  intended  as  efforts  to  achieve 


environmental  responsibility,  in  a  way,  allow  us  to  see  the 
city  as  a  zone  free  of  nature  (and  thus  antithetical  to  sus- 
tamabllity  and  free  of  our  environmental  responsibility). 
Most  of  the  sustainability  movements,  despite  their  efforts 
to  develop  an  ecological  view,  take  for  granted  this  sepa- 
ration of  nature  and  culture,  "...  since  it  is  the  Romantic 
view  of  Nature  that  lies  at  the  origin  of  all  contemporary 
ecological,  vitalist,  and  theoretical  biological  thought."^  At 
its  most  troubling,  this  way  of  thinking  insists  that  "the 
ecological  template  for  urban  change. ..lies  outside  of  so- 
ciety itself,"  as  historian  Matthew  Gandy  points  out  in  his 
treatise  on  nature  and  New  York  City.'  Like  Gandy,  Leo 
Marx  calls  for  a  change  in  consciousness  and  a  rejection 
of  this  bifurcation  as  a  necessity  for  true  sustainability,  let 
alone  a  more  philosophically  sound  way  to  live. 

In  the  built  environment,  this  philosophical  notion  has 
significant  ramifications.  Nature,  as  it  is  addressed  m  the 
standard  forms  of  building  and  planning  of  the  past  fifty 
years,  exists  as  little  more  than  the  view  through  the  picture 
window,  the  number  of  trees  in  the  park,  and  the  gallons 
of  water  of  runoff  per  year  These  manifestations  adhere 
to  the  two  views  that  have  persevered  since  the  Enlighten- 
ment: 1.  nature  as  quantifiable  phenomenon,  the  realm  of 
scientific  inquiry  and  2.  nature  as  an  aestheticized  land- 
scape; in  the  U.S.,  the  dialectic  that  exists  between  these 
two  views  results  m  homogeneous  suburbia. 


Enlightened  Nature 

Modern  physics  offers  us  an  idea  of  the  inextricable  co- 
involvement  of  subject  and  object  and  opens  up  the  idea 
of  differing,  individual  realities;  subjective  notions  of  time, 
space,  and  experience;  a  questioning  of  its  own  validity  as 
a  discipline  and  its  ability  to  answer  questions.  The  Dada- 
ists  and  surrealists  presaged  these  developments  in  their 
views  of  subjective  realities  and  efforts  to  channel  the  alea- 
tory into  everyday  life  -  in  effect,  efforts  to  recognize  the 
forces  that  exist  in  the  world  but  that  traditionally  have  not 
been  allowed  into  the  "rational"  view  of  it.  These  include 
the  recessive  values  of  the  Enlightenment  dichotomies: 
body,  spirit,  intuition,  and  chance.  As  John  Rajchman 
has  pointed  out,  "Indeed,  the  world  itself  is  not  'all  that 
IS  the  case'  (as  Wittgenstein  took  it  to  be)  for  it  includes 
an  undepictable  anterior  element  out  of  which  new  kinds 
of  things  can  happen,  new  concepts  emerge  -  the  space 
where  unforeseen  things  'take  place'."** 

While  other  disciplines  have  incorporated  these  notions, 
architecture  and  urbanism  fail  to  proffer  a  more  complex 
view  of  nature.  Kenneth  Frampton  in  a  recent  lecture 
stated  that,  "The  idea  of  habitat  is  based  first  upon  the 
extrinsic  nature  of  the  land  form  created  by  the  residential 


Caspar    23 


fabric,  and  second  upon  the  intrinsic  character  of  its  inner 
corporeal  space."^  He  argues  for  their  interrelationship 
to  form  "the  symbiotic  integration  of  nature  and  culture," 
even  as  his  language  separates  the  two. 

The  discipline  of  architecture,  too,  enforces  these  di- 
chotomies, employing  rationalism  to  suppress  many  of  the 
same  messy  issues  of  body,  spirit,  religion,  and  the  alea- 
tory. What  IS  left  are  Modernism's  and  phenomenology's 
focuses  on  an  abstract  notion  of  the  body  and  a  scientific 
(nature  as  elements  or  a  reflection  of  the  cosmos)  view  of 
nature  -  retreats  to  the  only  acceptable  territory  in  which 
to  engage  the  world  on  non-rational  terms.  More  recently, 
"sustainability"  and  organicism  have  proffered  more  in- 
tentional relationships  to  "nature,"  but  again  within  the 
Enlightenment  worldview.  Sustainability  focuses  on  the 
scientific,  quantifiable  aspects  of  nature  (energy  efficiency, 
hydrology),  and  organicism  (even  when  an  expression  of 
complexity,  as  in  Greg  Lynn's  work)  is  an  aesthetic,  one 
that  has  replaced  the  pastoral  with  an  equally  superficial 
understanding  of  the  biological. 

Science  and  technology  have  historically  been  interpreted 
through  philosophy  and  the  visual  and  plastic  arts  even  as 
they  are  absorbed  uncritically  into  social  use.  What  is  dis- 
turbing IS  the  realization  that  while  the  sciences  of  the  past 
50  years  have  radically  reconfigured  our  understanding  of 
the  world  and  integrated  new  knowledge  into  our  material 
culture,  the  dominant  functional  worldview  remains  locked 
in  the  very  Enlightenment  model  that  the  surrealists  were 
rejecting  in  the  1920s. 

Some  claim  that  the  complexity  of  contemporary  science 
and  the  ever  smaller  scale  at  which  it  occurs  prevents  the 
layperson  from  engaging  it.  Perhaps  we  can  move  beyond 
alienation  from  these  ideas:  they  open  up  room  in  the  world 
for  indeterminacy  and  for  the  aleatory  (and  certainly  some 
desire  for  those  feeds  the  insatiable  interest  m  parametric 
design  today  as  much  as  it  fed  automatic  writing,  painting, 
and  music).  They  tell  us  that,  like  in  a  Calvino  or  Murakami 
story,  if  for  a  second  we  politely  refuse  an  "absolute  truth," 
an  entire  new  world  suddenly  comes  in  to  being  (or  at  least 
into  view)  through  our  willingness  to  recognize  it. 

Those  architects  that  have  taken  on  the  ideas  of  Deleuze 
have  perhaps  come  closest  to  understanding  a  more  mean- 
ingful relationship  with(in)  nature,  the  simultaneity  of  the 
fold  suggesting  one  way  to  understand  it.  Yet  those  efforts, 
too,  have  remained  largely  formal  and  literal,  manifesting 
only  folding  planes  and  little  in  the  way  of  "smoothness." 

What  IS  missing  from  these  approaches  is  an  inclusion  of 
the  human  world  in  the  "natural,"  a  continuity  between 


the  two.  There  is  a  rich  set  of  systems  and  processes  in 
life  that  we  tend  to  disregard  but  that  could  be  embraced 
in  the  middle  ground  between  what  is  traditionally  per- 
ceived as  nature  and  culture.  Nature  cannot  be  addressed 
through  form  or  aesthetics,  but  perhaps  through  process 
and  performativeness.  An  architecture  that  responds  to 
the  worlds  of  nature  must  illuminate  a  space,  or  give  ac- 
cess to  knowledge  of  other  ways  of  being  in  the  world,  of 
participating  in  and  being  linked  to  a  larger  world  even  as 
we  live  and  labor  in  more  hermetic  ones.  Perhaps  Deleuze 
and  Guattari's  notion  of  the  simultaneity  of  smooth  and 
striated  space  offers  a  way  in:  what  we  must  create  in  the 
world  are  the  ruptures  that  make  that  simultaneity  visible. 
What  the  surrealists  saw  as  "a  direct  knowledge  of  reality; 
reality  [that]  is  absolute  and  unrelated  to  the  various  ways 
of  interpreting  it."'° 

I  argue  for  a  broader  definition  of  nature  as  the  starting 
point  for  a  new  approach  to  building.  I  am  particularly 
interested  in  how  such  a  definition  will  create  a  different 
conception  of  building  in  the  city.  Nature  is  the  worlds  we 
live  in,  the  physical,  metaphysical,  the  visual,  the  corpo- 
real, the  phenomenological,  the  emotional,  the  intellectual, 
the  surreal.  It  is  processes,  not  only  of  the  biotic  world, 
but  also  of  the  social,  the  human,  the  human-made.  How 
might  we  plan  and  build  cities  with  an  explicitly  broader 
definition  of  "nature?"  How  might  planning  and  architec- 
ture begin  to  embody  a  more  dialectical  notion  of  that 
relationship,  and  how  might  systems  that  are  traditionally 
perceived  as  very  much  not  a  part  of  nature,  such  as  the 
increasingly  complex  realm  of  technology  in  our  lives,  be 
integrated  into  this  relationship?  How  might  technology 
be  used,  not  to  dematerialize  or  virtualize  our  existences, 
but  to  reinforce  our  positions  in  the  material  world:  tech- 
nology as  "nature,  and  the  industrial  landscape  a  kind  of 
'wilderness,'  or  a  fluvial  system  that  could  be  diverted  or 
constrained."  as  Benton  MacKaye  recognized  in  the  mid- 
twentieth  century." 

In  a  recent  lecture  Sanford  Kwmter  stated,  "The  real  and 
possible  arrangements  of  intelligence  and  matter  in  nature 
are  one  thing  (and  likely  unlimited),  yet  how  we  represent 
these  possibilities  to  ourselves  is  another"  What  is  sug- 
gested here  is  that  we  begin  to  represent  nature  to  our- 
selves in  a  more  complex  way,  a  way  that  accounts  for  the 
multiplicity  of  "real  and  possible  arrangements,"  a  way 
that  provides  for  the  dialectic  as  a  method  to  understand 
the  relationship  of  human  and  nature,  a  way  that  accounts 
for  "a  continuity  of  the  subject  with  its  own  internal  spirit 
[...]  and  also  continuity  between  the  subject  and  object, 
between  the  subject  and  the  external  world. "'^  This  is  a 
proposal  to  build  in  the  dialectic,  the  space  between  our 
conceptions  of  "culture"  and  "nature." 


24     Caspar 


"For  we  no  longer  have  use  for  a  principle  of  pre-estab- 
lished harmony:  we  have  passed  from  the  notion  of  the 
best  compossible  world  to  the  possibility  of  a  'chaosmotic' 
one,  in  which  our  'manners'  ever  diverge  into  new  compli- 
cations...The  modernist  'machines  for  living'  sought  to  ex- 
press a  clean  efficient  space  for  the  new  mechanical  body; 
but  who  will  invent  a  way  to  express  the  affective  space  for 
this  other  multiplicitous  one?"" 


Notes 

1  Sanford  Kwmter,  "Architecture  and  ttie  Tectinoiogies  of  Life,"  in  AA  Files. 
Summer  1994,  n.  27.  3-4.;  David  Leatherbarrow,  Uncommon  Ground.  (Cam- 
bridge, MA:  MIT  Press,  2000);  Allen  S,  Weiss,  Unnatural  Horizons:  Paradox 
and  Contradiction  in  Landscape  Architecture.  (New  York:  Princeton  Architectural 
Press,  1998);  Leo  Marx,  The  Machine  in  the  Garden:  Technology  And  The  Pas- 
toral Ideal  In  Amenca.  35th  Anniversary  Edition.  (London:  Oxford  University 
Press,  1999). 

2  AD  Architecture  and  Science,  ed.  Francesca  Di  Cnstina.  Wiley  Academy  West 
Sussex  :  2001.  110115;   Weiss,  1998, 

3  Saunders,  Peter  T.  "Nonlinearity:  What  It  Is  and  Why  It  Matters,"  m  AD  Ar- 
ch/tec ture  and  Science,  ed.  Francesca  Di  Cristina.  Wiley  Academy.  West  Sussex 
:  2001.  110-115.    R  110 

4  Diana  Agrest  "The  Return  of  (the  Repressed)  Nature,"  in  The  Architect  Re- 
constructing Her  Practice,  edited  by  Francesca  Hughes.  (Cambridge,  IVIA:  MIT 
Press,  1996,)  204. 

5  Museu  d'Art  Conemporani  de  Barcelona  (editors).  New  Territories,  New  Land- 
scapes.   (Barcelona:  Actar  Publications,  1997,)  102. 

6  Kv^inter,  Praxis,  p.  6;  Matthew  Gandy  Concrete  And  Clay  :  Reworking  Nature  In 
New  York  City.   (Cambridge,  MA:  MIT  Press,  2002);  Marx 

7  Gandy  2002. 

8  John  Rajchman,  "Out  of  the  Fold,"  In  The  Architecture  of  Science,  edited  by 
Peter  Galison  and  Emily  Thompson.   (Cambridge,  MA:  MIT  Press,  1999,)  35 

9  Frampton,  Kenneth.  "Habitat  Revisited:  From  Land  Form  to  Corporeal 
Space,"  transcript  of  lecture  given  at  the  Architectural  League  of  New  Yorl<, 
2002-2003  Lecture  Series. 

10  Rene  Magntte,  1965,  quoted  in  Michael  Richardson  and  Krzysztof  Fi- 
jalkowski,  Editors,  Surrealism  Against  the  Current:  Tracts  and  Declarations, 
London;  Pluto  Press.    2001,  p.  206. 

11  Keller  Easterlmg,  Organization  Space:  Landscapes,  Highways  and  Houses  in 
America.   (Cambridge,  MA:  MIT  Press,  1999,)  16. 

12  Philippe  Audom,  1966,  in  Richardson,  p.  206. 

13  Ra)chman,  p.  37 


Caspar    25 


1 
1 


1__J 


w>^-    B 


1  Weather  Patterns 


Krystal  Chang 

Weather  Resistant 


On  a  winter  day  in  1961,  Edward  Lorenz,  a  matin- 
ematician  and  meteorologist  at  the  Massachusetts 
Institute  of  Technology,  set  out  to  construct  a  math- 
ematical model  of  the  weather.  He  reduced  the 
weather  down  to  a  set  of  twelve  differential  equations, 
representing  changes  m  temperature,  pressure,  wind 
velocity,  etc.  In  reexamining  a  sequence  of  data, 
Lorenz  tried  to  save  time  by  restarting  the  run  from 
the  middle,  anticipating  the  same  results  as  the  first 
run.  What  came  out  was  completely  different,  begin- 
ning from  the  same  point  and  then  diverging  wildly 
within  a  few  "model"  months.  Lorenz  first  suspected 
a  computer  malfunction,  but  later  discovered  what 
has  become  known  as  "the  butterfly  effect"  or  the 
idea  in  meteorology  that  the  flapping  of  a  butterfly's 
wing  creates  a  disturbance  in  the  atmosphere  that  will 
become  so  amplified  as  to  eventually  change  large 
scale  atmospheric  motion.  Because  of  this  "sensitive 
dependence  on  initial  conditions,"  long-term  behavior 
becomes  impossible  to  forecast. 

Lorenz  is  credited  with  coining  the  term  "butterfly 
effect".  In  a  paper  in  1963  given  to  the  New  York 
Academy  of  Sciences  he  wrote:  "One  meteorologist 
remarked  that  if  the  theory  were  correct,  one  flap  of 
a  seagull's  wings  would  be  enough  to  alter  the  course 
of  the  weather  forever"  By  the  time  of  his  talk  at  the 
December  1972  meeting  of  the  American  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science  m  Washington,  D.C. 
the  sea  gull  had  evolved  into  the  more  poetic  butterfly 
-  the  title  of  his  talk  was:  "Predictability:  Does  the 
Flap  of  a  Butterfly's  Wings  in  Brazil  set  off  a  Tornado 
in  Texas?"' 

Weather  is  architecture's  other.  Weather  is  always  what 
architecture  is  not,  cannot  be,  and  perhaps,  occasionally, 
desires  to  be:  immaterial,  formless,  weightless.  Weather 
presides  over  the  birth  and  death  of  architecture.  It  is 
both  the  cause  of  its  being  (the  original  impulse  for  ar- 
chitecture is  in  shelter  from  the  elements:  building  was 
always  a  form  of  protection  from  natural  forces)  and  the 
final  ending  (erosion  and  the  decay  of  buildings).    Archi- 


tecture attempts  to  resist  weather  Weather,  on  the  other 
hand,  cannot  resist  architecture. 

The  term  "weather"  actually  has  two  opposing  meanings: 
"weather"  can  mean,  alternately,  to  decay,  and  to  resist. 
"Weathering"  describes  both  the  process  of  decaying,  and 
the  element  of  a  building  that  is  meant  to  withstand  the 
effects  of  weather.^ 

The  first  model  of  weather  is  weather  as  myth,  both  natu- 
ral and  unpredictable.  Weather  remains  stubbornly  unex- 
plainable  by  a  Cartesian  mode  of  thinking.  Ram,  wind,  and 
sun  sent  down  by  the  capricious  and  hard-to-please  gods; 
weather  could  be  invoked  but  not  invented. 

The  second  model  of  weather  is  weather  as  a  nonlinear 
system  and  example  of  chaos  theory.  As  such,  weather 
has  an  underlying  order,  although  it  is  still  unpredictable. 
In  watching  animations  of  satellite  images  -  weather  sys- 
tems gathering,  dispersing,  swirling  -  all  is  logical,  all  pro- 
ceeds in  a  continuous  fluid  motion.  Small  things  become 
big  things,  blow  about,  and  disappear  Given  the  rotation 
of  the  earth,  the  tilt  of  the  earth's  axis,  and  the  presence 
of  sunlight,  what  results  is  a  difference  in  temperature  and 
pressure  over  the  globe.  This  difference  sets  in  motion  the 
seasons,  with  their  anticipated  weather;  the  climate  zones, 
from  tropical  to  temperate  to  polar;  the  constant  wind 
blowing  from  the  poles  to  the  equator:  the  trade  winds 
blowing  steadily  from  East  to  West  above  and  below  the 
equator   After  this,  everything  else  is  local. 

There  is  a  new  model  of  weather:  weather  as  built.  We 
know  now  it  is  possible  to  create  weather. 

Every  nation  builds  houses  for  its  own  climate.  At  this 
time  of  international  interpretation  of  scientific  tech- 
niques, I  propose:  one  single  building  for  all  nations 
and  climates,  the  house  with  respiration  exacte....! 
make  air  at  18°  Centigrade  and  at  a  humidity  related 
to  the  state  of  the  weather   -  Le  Corbusier,  1930 


Chang    27 


Weather  may  be  created  deliberately  or  inadvertently. 
When  weather  is  made  with  a  purpose,  it  usually  falls  into 
one  of  two  categories.  Weather  as  luxury,  or  weather  for 
people:  the  airplane  cabin,  the  sauna,  the  steam  room,  the 
suntan  salon. ^  Weather  as  industrial  process,  or  weather 
for  things:  the  greenhouse,  the  cold  storage,  the  wind  tun- 
nel. These  are  examples  of  weather  in  a  small  sense;  they 
are  all  self-contained,  hermetic  spaces. 

When  weather  is  created  accidentally,  a  by-product  of  oth- 
er forces  and  processes,  and  set  loose,  it  becomes  weather 
in  the  true,  global  sense.  Although  it  may  begin  artificially, 
it  soon  becomes  all  too  real.  The  phenomenon  of  the 
"urban  heat  island"  is  well  documented  (Figure  2).  On 
average,  a  city's  temperature  is  one  or  two  degrees  higher 
than  its  surroundings.  However,  the  mam  tendency  of  the 
urban  heat  island  is  not  to  change  the  average  air  tem- 
perature, but  to  reduce  the  day-night  difference."  Wind  pat- 
terns around  objects  show  wind  speed  increasing  through 
gaps  between  large  surfaces  and  around  the  corners  of 
tall  buildings;  the  higher  the  building  and  the  smaller  the 
gap,  the  faster  the  wind.  In  the  days  after  September  11, 
2001,  with  all  air  travel  grounded,  scientists  discovered  the 
enormous  effect  of  airplanes  on  weather  by  their  absence 
(Figures  3,  4,  5).  Airplanes  leave  trails  of  condensation 
that  form  the  artificial  clouds  known  as  "contrails."  It  is 
estimated  that  contrails  cover  0.1  percent  of  the  earth's 
surface,  with  that  percentage  going  up  to  20  percent  in 
certain  regions.  During  the  three-day  commercial  flight  hi- 
atus, when  the  contrails  all  but  disappeared,  the  variations 
in  high  and  low  temperatures  increased  by  1.1  degrees 
Celsius  (two  degrees  Fahrenheit)  each  day  Like  naturally 
occurring  cirrus  clouds  (thin,  high-altitude  clouds),  con- 
trails block  out  sunlight  and  trap  in  heat,  thus  reducing  the 
daily  range  m  daytime  highs  and  nighttime  lows.  Contrails 
have  been  found  to  provide  even  more  insulation,  further  re- 
ducing variability^  Similar  to  contrails,  ship  tracks,  formed 
by  the  aerosol  particles  in  ship  exhaust,  have  been  shown 
to  modify  cloud  formations,  causing  the  clouds  to  be  more 
reflective  and  carry  more  water,  and  possibly  keep  them 
from  precipitating. 

It  is  difficult  to  draw  the  line  between  the  natural  and  the 
built  when  cities  make  warmer,  brighter  night  -  nights  like 
days  -  while  our  own  travel  habits  can  turn  a  sky  from 
clear  to  partly  cloudy,  and,  whether  in  Bangkok,  Berlin,  or 
Brighton  Beach,  you  can  have  your  air  just  the  way  you  like 
it.  Weather  can  be  seen  as  architecture;  it  is  part  of  the 
built  landscape,  of  physically  altered  nature.  At  first,  ar- 
chitecture seems  to  create  difference,  with  a  simple  enclo- 
sure offering  a  dry  space  during  ram,  and  air-conditioning 
creating  winter  in  summer.  But  in  the  end,  what  we  are  left 
with  IS  sameness,  with  day  and  night  becoming  irrelevant 


and  an  identical  "climate"  artificially  inserted  regardless 
of  place,  making  all  places  alike. 

Perhaps,  instead  of  this  anti-variety  that  is  the  antithesis 
of  weather,  there  is  a  possibility  for  an  architecture  of 
weather.  An  architecture  of  variability,  gradation,  un- 
predictability, and  resistance;  all  climates  in  one  single 
building. 

At  a  bank  building  under  construction  in  Los  Angeles, 
it  was  once  100  degrees  on  the  ground  floor  and  hail- 
ing on  the  sixty-fourth  floor.  This  is  something  I'd  re- 
ally like  to  take  advantage  of.'   -  Pierre  Koenig,  2002 

On  an  urban  scale,  the  presence  of  a  city  alters  local 
weather  conditions,  causing  a  change  in  site  conditions  for 
new  structures,  creating  new  patterns  of  sun  and  shade 
and  wind,  resulting  in  new  weather  patterns,  resulting  in 
new  structures,  resulting  in.... 

By  extension,  any  change  in  the  form  or  position  of  any 
object  can  alter  every  other  object  in  existence. 

This  ambiguity  of  influences  is  evident  in  the  very  impos- 
sibility of  studying  weather;  there  is  essentially  no  control 
group,  only  an  experimental  group.  In  Australia,  when 
scientists  began  seeding  clouds  -  inserting  particles  that 
would  promote  condensation,  and  thus  creating  rain  dur- 
ing drought  -  it  was  difficult  for  them  to  conclude  that  they 
were  actually  having  an  effect.  Once  a  cloud  was  seeded,  it 
was  impossible  to  tell  whether  or  not  it  would  have  rained 
by  itself.  The  conditions  are  always  different  for  each  par- 
ticular cloud,  each  change  in  temperature,  and  each  occa- 
sion of  low  or  high  pressure.  The  built  landscape  is  a  part 
of  this  whole,  fluid  system. 

The  relationship  between  weather  and  architecture  is  also 
one  between  climate  and  civilization.  Research  from  the 
North  Greenland  Ice-core  Project  reveals  a  history  of  ex- 
treme changes  in  climate,  hot  to  cold,  wet  to  dry.  "If  you 
can  possibly  imagine  the  spectacle  of  some  really  stupid 
person  (or,  better,  a  mannequin)  bungee  jumping  off  the 
side  of  a  moving  roller-coaster  car,  you  can  begin  to  pic- 
ture the  climate,"  described  one  geophysicist.  Our  present 
interglacial  period  is  the  most  stable  period  in  history,  and, 
according  to  the  climatic  record,  is  due  to  end  soon.  The 
ice  cores  indicate  that  at  the  end  of  the  last  interglacial 
period,  at  a  moment  roughly  analogous  to  the  present, 
temperatures  plunged  from  warmer  than  they  are  today 
to  the  coldest  levels  of  the  ice  age,  all  within  a  matter  of 
decades.  When  looking  at  the  climatic  record,  at  first  it 
seems  sheer  luck  that  we  are  living  in  this  most  stable 
period.  However,  we  are  ourselves  a  product  of  this  pe- 
riod; a  stable  climate  is  necessary  for  agriculture,  the  first 


28     Chang 


2  Urban  Heat  Islands,  top,  urban  density  in  black,  bottom,  temperature  from  cool  (dark)  to  hot  (white) 


Step  away  from  nomadism  and  toward  the  development  of 
civilization.'  Another  recent  find  has  linked  the  fall  of  the 
Mayan  civilization  to  drought.  A  study  of  sediments  from 
the  Cariaco  Basin  in  the  southern  Caribbean  shows  a  long 
drought  with  periods  of  extra  dryness  that  began  in  the 
seventh  century  and  lasted  over  100  years.  The  elaborate 
Mayan  cities  and  irrigation  systems  were  inexplicably 
abandoned  early  in  the  seventh  century,  reoccupied,  and 
abandoned  again  around  850  and  910.  These  abandon- 
ments synchronize  with  the  timing  of  the  dry  spells.'' 


It  IS  possible  that  the  climate  is  overdue  for  another  cata- 
clysmic shift.  It  is  also  possible  that  we  have  changed  the 
climate  to  such  a  degree  that  a  new  history  has  begun. 
Weather  can  be  mapped  as  a  constantly  shifting  topogra- 
phy, occupying  several  scales  at  once,  created  by  the  inter- 
section of  the  intergalactic,  continental,  local,  molecular, 
arising  from  the  confluence  of  multiple  forces,  invisible, 
but  readily  provocative.  That  elusive  butterfly's  wing.  What 
was  natural?  What  was  built?  Anticipating  the  weather  is 
like  playing  a  game  in  which  any  move  changes  the  rules; 
cause  and  effect  are  indistinguishable. 


Chang     29 


3  and  4  Contrails  observed  from  the  ground  in  Los  Angeles 


30    Chang 


5  Satellite  images  of  airplane  contrails  over  the  Great  Lakes 


Notes 

1  Larry  D.  Bradley.  Paper  written  in  conjunction  with  a  talk  given  for  Interme- 
diate Physics  Seminar  of  the  Department  of  Physics  and  Astronomy  at  the 
Johns  Hopkins  University.  http://www,pha, jhu.edu/~ldb/seminar/index. html. 

2  "'Weathering'  [was]  originally  defined  as  that  part  of  a  building  that  pro- 
jected beyond  the  surface  of  any  external  wall  and  served  as  a  'drip',  in  order 
to  throw  off  rainwater  Weathering  also  referred  to  a  sloped  'setoff'  of  a  wall 
or  buttress,  or  the  inclination  of  any  surface,  designed  to  prevent  the  lodge- 
ment of  water.  This  sense  of  the  term  survives  in  present  usage  m  the  terms 
'weatherboard',  'weatherstrip',  and  'weatherproofing'."  Mohsen  Mostafavi  and 
David  Leatherbarrow,  On  Weathering:  The  Life  of  Buildings  m  Time.  (Cambridge: 
MIT  Press.  1993). 

3  At  the  Venetian  hotel  in  Las  Vegas,  a  recreation  of  the  canals  and  squares 
of  Venice  completely  sealed  off  from  the  outdoors,  one  of  the  live  shows  is  a 
rainstorm.    Along  the  miniature  Grand  Canal,  every  so  often  the  painted  sky 


darkens,  thunder  approaches,  and  rain  falls  hard  on  the  cobblestones.  After  a 
few  minutes,  the  sun  comes  out  again  and  birds  chirp.  Here  we  have  weather 
on  demand:  a  short,  sweet  rain  every  hour,  on  the  hour  The  ultimate  example 
of  weather  as  novelty. 

4  Benjamin  Stem  and  John  S.  Reynolds.  Mechanical  and  Electrical  Equipment  for 
Buildings.  (New  York:  John  Wiley  and  Sons,  2000). 

5  Richard  Stenger.  "9/1 1  study:  Air  traffic  affects  climate."  CNN  website 
August  8,  2002. 

6  Paul  Makovsky.  "Microclimates"  in  Metropolis  Magazine.  August/September 
2002. 

7  Elizabeth  Kolbert.    "Ice  Memory"  in  The  New  Yorker.    January  7,  2002. 

8  Paul  Recer  "Dry  Spell  Linked  to  Demise  of  the  Mayan"  AP  Newswire.  March 
13.  2003. 


Chang     31 


John  Divola 

Artificial  Nature 


Over  twenty  years  ago  I  read  an  essay  by  Arthur  C.  Clarke 
that  occasionally  comes  to  mind.  Clarke  was  speculating 
on  the  certainty  that  mankind  would  develop  artificial  in- 
telligence, and  that  eventually  such  an  intelligence  would 
have  the  ability  to  learn,  move  through  the  world,  and  act. 
It  would  not  be  constrained  by  the  limitations  of  biological 
life  span  and  it  could  live  indefinitely.  Eventually,  it  might 
travel  into  space,  and  given  eternity,  it  could  travel  every- 
where in  the  universe  and  learn  everything  that  there  was 
to  know.  And  if  this  consciousness  knew  everything,  then 
it  would  have  the  ability  to  control  everything  and  would 
be  in  concert  with  the  very  conception  of  God.  "It  may  be 
that  our  role  on  this  planet  is  not  to  worship  God,  but  to 
create  him."  I  am  not  sure  whether  this  eventuality  would 
represent  "culture's"  final  domination  of  "nature"  or  if  the 
relationship  would  revert  to  the  condition  of  nature  alone 
and  the  cycle  begin  anew. 

Since  today's  computers  do  not  have  the  capacity  to  vi- 
sually differentiate  a  camel  from  a  cat,  I  do  not  think  we 
need  to  spend  too  much  time  worrying  about  the  fruition 
of  Clarke's  speculation.  However,  this  model  of  techno- 
prophecy  has  brought  me  to  consider  another  intersection 
of  myth,  science,  and  technology  -  the  collective  uncon- 
scious. 

The  psychiatrist  and  theorist  Carl  Jung  speculated  that 
human  beings  have  a  biological  propensity  to  form  certain 
mythic  structures  that  he  called  archetypes.  In  his  per- 
sonal writing  he  describes  the  existence  of  a  collective  hu- 
man consciousness.  Rather  than  Jung's  idea  of  a  psychic 
inheritance,  a  collective  unconscious  may  be  something 
that  humanity  is  in  the  process  of  implementing.  While 
one  might  suggest  language  itself  is  the  beginning  of 
collective  identity,  contemporary  visual  culture  shifted  the 
abstraction  of  language  to  a  realm  of  shared  experiential 
specificity. 

We  have  extended  the  externalization  of  memory  in  the 
form  of  digital  databases  and  we  have  interwoven  repre- 


sentational experience  with  direct  experience  to  a  degree 
where  we  can  no  longer  distinguish  the  basis  for  our  con- 
ceptions of  reality.  Furthermore,  there  no  longer  appears 
to  be  much  individual  appetite  for  interrogating  the  differ- 
ence. When  I  think  about  Manhattan,  and  I  have  been  there 
many  times,  I  cannot  clearly  identify  the  source  of  my 
conceptions.  These  conceptions  are  based  in  direct  expe- 
rience, Manhattan  as  background  in  TV  detective  fictions, 
or  numerous  other  representational  sources.  It  never  re- 
ally occurs  to  me  that  I  should  make  a  distinction  as  to 
the  sources  on  which  I  base  this  image  of  place.  Whether 
from  direct  experience  of  the  world  or  direct  experience 
of  the  physical  evidence  that  constitutes  photographic 
representation,  visual  experience  and  memory  gradually 
focus  these  impressions  on  a  condition  of  equivalence. 
Memories  of  my  actual  experiences  with  any  particular 
city  must  compete  with  a  relentless  stream  of  representa- 
tions of  Pans,  New  York,  and  Los  Angeles.  Memories  of 
walks  in  nature  are  intermixed  with  that  familiar  stretch  of 
desert  highway  that  I  see  continually  repeated  in  automo- 
tive commercials. 

What  we  see  on  TV,  movies,  computers,  and  magazines 
is  an  indirect  manifestation  of  our  collective  desires  and 
interest.  For  the  most  part,  those  responsible  for  the  pro- 
duction of  popular  culture  are  desperately  trying  to  give  us 
what  we  want.  With  each  passing  year  the  "entertainment 
industry"  becomes  more  skilled  at,  and  the  technology 
more  appropriate  to,  targeting  our  interest.  The  media 
does  not  sell  us  products;  it  sells  our  attention  to  those 
who  wish  to  influence  us.  There  is  a  rapidly  accelerating 
efficiency  of  the  cultural  feedback  loop  where  represen- 
tations inform  our  desires  and  where  our  desires  direct 
subsequent  representations.  There  is,  of  course,  no  one 
shared  base  of  mediated  visual  experiences.  There  are, 
however,  many  overlapping  constituencies  of  experience 
based  on  lifetimes  of  passive  representational  reception. 

For  me,  as  an  artist,  there  exists  a  realm  of  popular  visual 
culture  that  is  an  experiential  reality  -  a  space  open  to  ne- 


Divola  33 


gotiation  and  inquiry.  It  is  an  envelope  of  representations 
that  I  can  explore  through  the  manipulation  of  existing  im- 
ages or  engage  literally  (most  recently,  I  have  completed  a 
group  of  photographs  I  made  on  the  sets  of  the  television 
program  The  X-Files).  What  I  am  after  as  an  artist  is  an 
opaque  manifestation  of  the  illusion  of  transparency  that 
characterizes  this  cultural  space. 

The  images  reproduced  with  this  essay  are  from  an  instal- 
lation of  36  photographs  titled  "Artificial  Nature"  compris- 
ing found  set  still  photographs  of  natural  environments 
constructed  on  Hollywood  sound  stages.  Set  stills  are 
photographs  taken  of  motion  picture  sets  to  aid  in  the 
preservation  of  filmic  continuity.  Occasionally,  for  a  variety 
of  reasons,  a  scene  will  need  to  be  re-shot,  or  added  to, 
and  these  pictures  provide  a  record  of  where  things  were 
placed  and  how  they  were  lit.  I  began  to  collect  Hollywood 
set  stills  simply  because  I  considered  them  fascinating  and 


beautiful.  They  also  intersected  with  my  work,  which  had 
involved  photographing  scenes  specifically  fabricated  for 
the  camera,  often  addressing  issues  of  absence.  The  set 
stills  that  make  up  "Artificial  Nature"  were  made  for  a  va- 
riety of  Hollywood  studios  and  are  dated  between  1930 
and  1960. 

Since  these  photographs  were  only  intended  for  practical 
applications  they  were  not  attributed  to  individual  photog- 
raphers. Sets  were  constructed  from  the  descriptions  of 
authors  and  the  contributions  of  designers,  art  directors, 
studio  executives,  and  directors,  and  ultimately  filtered 
through  the  sensibilities  of  anonymous  studio  photogra- 
phers. Nature,  which  only  a  few  hundred  years  ago  was 
seen  to  be  an  infinite  context  in  which  culture  struggled  to 
exist,  is  here  the  literal  manifestation  of  a  figurative  asser- 
tion, controllable  and  contained. 


34    Divola 


Divola    35 


a?-- 


36     Divola 


Divola     37 


Mark  Burry 

Re-natured  Hybrid 


Central  to  his  erudite  tour  de  force.  Dancing  Column:  On 
Order  in  Architecture,  Joseph  Rykwert  uses  that  most  ro- 
bust and  ubiquitous  structural  element,  the  column,  to 
distil  a  history  of  western  civilization,  and  more  crucially 
the  values  enshrined  within  two  millennia  of  western  ar- 
chitecture. 

The  column-and-beam  element  is,  in  itself,  a  constitu- 
ent of  the  man-made,  of  the  artificial  world.  It  is  also 
part  of  an  all-encompassing  metaphor  that  makes  hu- 
man shelter  an  embodying,  an  m-corporation.' 

He  begins  by  explaining  the  origins  of  a  career-long  fasci- 
nation with  the  five  orders,  then  spends  almost  six  hundred 
pages  roaming  widely  in  cultural,  geographical,  practical, 
etymological,  and  ultimately  epistemological  domains, 
concluding  with  a  rather  sober  observation: 

I  therefore  hope  that  I  have  presented  Greek  architec- 
ture as  the  most  entrancing  and  forceful,  the  exem- 
plary art  of  building,  an  architecture  which  still  invites 
dialogue  and  touch,  which  requires  physical  contact 
across  the  millennia.  It  cannot  teach  us  -  history 
never  can.  But  we  may  learn  from  it.^ 

The  book  is  directed  more  at  revealing  the  cultural  enrich- 
ment that  comes  from  an  encyclopedic  tracing  of  the 
lineage  of  each  manifestation  of  the  column  back  to  its 
source  than  to  exploring  the  diverse  wealth  inherent  in  the 
familial,  cultural,  and  historical  web  that  begets  it.  Pos- 
sibly as  an  implied  critique  of  the  postmodern  applique 
of  the  orders,  Rykwert  refers  to  projects  by  Loos,  Asplund, 
and  Gaudf  as  evidence  of  three  architects  who,  having 
assimilated  the  'Greekness'  of  the  Doric  order,  offered  it 
back  through  their  projects,  reconstituted  but  original.  For 
Gaudi.  he  selects  the  hypostyle  market  place  in  the  Pare 
Guell  (1900  -  1914)  (Figure  1). 

But  other  major  and  innovative  architects  adapted  the 
existing  orders  to  their  own  use.  Antoni  Gaudi  was  a 
conspicuous  example,  perhaps  because  he  made  the 
appeal  so  sparingly  And  of  course  he  was  much  more 


'Gothic'  than  'classical,'  a  self-confessed  disciple  of 
Viollet-le-Duc.  In  one  important  building,  he  used  the 
Doric  order  impressively;  the  Pare  Guell  in  Barcelona, 
which  was  to  have  been  the  central  open  space  (called 
by  Gaudi  'the  Greek  Theater')  of  a  new  garden-city.^ 

Rykwert  is  highly  selective  here,  as  there  are  more  intrigu- 
ing examples  of  references  to  ancient  Greek  culture  in 
Gaudi's  other  work.  Despite  his  assertion  that  it  is  Gaudi's 
"only  explicit  reference  to  Greek  architecture...,"  Rykwert's 
priorities  are  evident:" 

Asplund  and  Gaudi  and  Loos  in  their  very  different 
ways  were  tributaries  to  an  ancient  and  grandiose 
-  but  apparently  buried  or  broken  -  tradition:  that 
the  Greek  orders  enshrined  and  transmitted  values 
of  primordial  as  well  as  perennial  validity.  Until  the 
eighteenth  century  the  core  notions  of  that  tradition 
could  be  taken  for  granted:  from  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth,  the  different  historians  and  architects  who 
wrote  about  the  orders  needed  to  plead  and  vindicate. 
That  may  be  why  attention  clung  so  insistently  to  the 
Greek  Doric  order,  and  why  my  three  salient  twentieth- 
century  examples  are  of  Greek  Doric.  It  seemed  older, 
nobler  -  or  at  least  notionally  more  'primitive'  and 
therefore  less  'historical'  -  than  the  others.^ 

The  Pare  Guell  hypostyle  has  a  compositional  connection 
to  its  temple  antecedent,  and  the  interpretation  of  the 
Doric  order  and  associated  motif  is  overt:  hence  Rykwert's 
interest.    It  is  odd  that  he  makes  no  reference  to  the  soli- 


38     Burry 


tary  caryatid  placed  elsewhere  m  the  park  (Figure  2).  Its 
fabric,  placement  and  singularity  make  the  motive  for  its 
Incorporation  rather  difficult  to  discern  -  is  it  ironical,  hu- 
morous, or  merely  decorative? 

Concurring  with  Rykwert's  assertions  that  Gaudi  is  seek- 
ing to  make  a  Mediterranean  link  between  Catalonia  and 
Greece,  former  collaborator  Cesar  Martmell  notes  the 
following  in  his  account  of  his  many  conversations  with 
Gaudi.  Under  the  subtitle  "Gaudi's  Innate  Hellenism": 
"He  indicated  to  me  that  all  the  business  about  mosaics 
is  Greek.  Constantmopolitan.  That  he  felt  this  as  a  natural 
way  of  being,  that  he  wore  it  from  within."^ 

Evidence  of  Gaudi's  (and  his  patron,  Eusabi  Guell's) 
broader-ranging  classical  scholarship  is  provided  by  refer- 
ences to  ancient  Greece  in  other  projects  which,  in  detail, 
are  more  wide  reaching  than  the  overt  evocation  of  the 
Doric  order  at  Pare  Guell.  A  thorough  examination  of  the 
gatehouse  and  stables  for  the  Finca  Guell  (aka  Pabellones 
Guell  1884  -  1887)  at  Guell's  country  estate,  for  instance, 
makes  reference  to  the  Garden  of  the  Hesperides,  and  is 
a  far  more  subtle  Greek  intervention  than  the  game  be- 
ing played  through  the  hypostyle  in  Pare  Guell.  It  is  not 
as  easy  to  pick  up,  but  it  is  unequivocally  there  all  the 
same.  There  are  no  Doric  columns,  but  a  splendid  scrap- 
iron  dragon  in  watchful  repose  recalling  the  legend  of  St 
George,  the  patron  saint  of  Catalonia,  and  his  slaying  of 
the  dragon.  This  reading,  however  legitimate,  masks  a 
deeper  reference,  for  the  dragon  resides  beneath  an  apple 
tree  made  from  the  metal  antimony  and  alludes  to  the  la- 
bors of  Hercules.  It  was  the  contemporary  Catalan  poet 
Jacint  Verdaguer  who,  in  his  epic  poem  "L'Atlantida,"  used 
the  Labors  of  Hercules  as  a  metaphor  for  what  he  saw  as 
the  equivalent  labors  of  Christopher  Columbus  who  set  sail 
(with  Catalan  capital)  from  Catalonia.  That  Gaudi  power- 
fully dramatized  this  connection  reveals  a  wide  perspective 
that  enabled  him  to  reference  Verdaguer,  thereby  implicitly 
linking  ancient  Greece  to  his  city.  ' 

Gaudi  was  inclined  to  work  through  metaphor,  allusion, 
and  allegory  at  a  number  of  levels.    The  Sagrada  Familia 


Church  was  intended  to  be  read  as  a  sculpted  version 
of  the  bible.  Internally,  the  principal  columns  conceal  a 
synthesis  of  the  Doric  order,  but  also  seek  to  rectify  the 
deficiencies  of  the  Gothic  as  a  means  to  reconcile  the 
architectural  movements  in  Catalonia  since  Roman  settle- 
ment. Before  laying  open  the  secrets  that  Gaudi  assumed 
would  remain  far  from  view  (as  will  be  discussed  below),  a 
summary  of  innovation  for  other  columns  within  his  oeuvre 
will  serve  to  show  his  route  to  a  sublimation  of  history  and 
a  theory  based  on  combining  the  lessons  of  nature  and 
culture  into  his  final  work.  Let  us  look  briefly  at  the  col- 
umns from  three  other  projects  before  concluding  with  the 
Sagrada  Familia  nave  columns  referred  to  above. 

The  first  example  of  a  departure  from  any  convention  in 
placement,  decoration,  and  intercolumniation,  can  be  seen 
in  Guell's  townhouse,  Palau  Guell  (1886  ■  1889).  There 
he  modified  the  lighting  by  layering  the  columns  in  triples 
(Figure  3).  Gaudi  completed  a  convent  school  in  the  same 
year,  the  Colegio  Teresiano  (1888  -  1889).  In  contrast  with 
the  townhouse,  the  convent  was  built  on  a  very  tight  bud- 
get, yet  Gaudi's  creativity  did  not  seem  to  be  stunted  in  any 
way.  One  of  the  most  remarkable  features  of  the  convent 
IS  a  patio  with  a  double  colonnade  of  single-brick  columns 
at  each  end  of  the  building  (Figure  4).  The  riskiness  of 
supporting  two  floors  of  masonry  in  this  way  is  quite 
palpable  when,  with  one's  hand  against  the  face  of  the  col- 
umn, vibrations  from  activity  in  the  opposite  corner  can  be 
felt:  the  bricks  are  working.  It  is  curious  that  there  should 
be  one  less  brick  in  the  stack  along  one  side.  Regardless 
of  what  IS  behind  this  asymmetry,  there  is  an  enthralling 
honesty  that  Khan  would  have  admired:  the  bricks,  frogs 
and  all,  unashamedly  celebrate  their  highly  tuned  function 
as  columns. 

Perhaps  the  most  significant  departure  from  the  estab- 
lished orders  are  the  columns  at  the  Colonia  Guell  church 
(1898  -  1915).  This  remarkable  building  -  abandoned  with 
only  the  crypt  constructed  -  has  columns  of  unworked  ba- 
salt prisms,  inclined  to  meet  their  forces  of  opposition 
along  their  axes,  their  positions  determined  by  the  1:10 
hanging  model  arranged  in  a  shed  next  to  the  site  (Fig- 


1  Hypostyle  marketplace,  and 

2  Caryatid,  both  at  Pare  Gijell 

3  Columns  screening  window, 
Palau  Guell 

4  Colonnaded  Patio,  Convento  de 
Santa  Teresa 

5  Crypt,  Colonia  Guell  Chapel 

Burry     39 


ure  5).  This  was  hardly  a  building  for  which  conventional 
drawings  could  usefully  serve.  The  builders  consulted  the 
model  for  coordinates  from  which  the  columns  could  be 
correctly  aligned.  To  say  that  the  columns  are  unworked  is 
a  slight  exaggeration:  Gaudi  successfully  requested  wedge 
cuts  to  be  taken  at  the  column-base  connections  in  order 
to  apply  a  little  extra  frisson  to  the  mix  of  improbable  ma- 
sonry and  structural  performance,  within  an  interior  that 
might  best  be  described  as  sublime. 

This  design  may  have  stemmed  from  his  Hellenophile  cli- 
ent rather  than  Gaudi's  own  prediliction  for  the  classical, 
but  I  do  not  believe  that  he  had  any  clear  preference  -  he 
was  neither  classical  nor  Gothic.  In  fact,  he  set  out  to 
'correct'  the  Gothic,  seeking  to  distil  all  that  he  saw  as 
relevant  from  the  preceding  two  millennia  of  architectural 
evolution  into  one  highly  evocative  column.  A  hybrid  of  hu- 
man artifice  and  of  nature  -  a  re-naturing  of  architecture 
-  set  this  work  against  a  growing  tendency  in  reductionism 
that  began  with  the  Enlightenment  and  continues  today.  If 
the  columns  at  the  Colonia  Guell  are  remarkable  for  their 
simplicity,  they  contrast  sharply  with  the  highly  finished 
sophistication  of  the  Sagrada  Familia. 

Cesar  Martinell  provides  this  account  of  a  conversation  he 
had  with  Gaudi  on  the  subject  of  the  proposed  columns  for 
the  Sagrada  Familia  Church: 

He  spoke  to  me  of  the  helicoidally  generated  columns 
with  the  parabolic  star-shaped  base  plans,  which  turn 
in  two  opposite  senses,  intersecting  with  themselves. 
He  said  that  the  resulting  form  which  he  has  made  in 
plaster,  at  a  scale  of  1:20,  is  a  summary  of  all  the 
columns  that  have  existed:  Egyptian,  Greek,  Roman- 
esque, Gothic,  Renaissance,  Salomonic...  I  had  to  ob- 
serve that  the  generation  rule  of  said  column,  despite 
its  simplicity,  remains  hidden:  and  if  many  architects 
were  to  be  asked  without  having  been  previously  told, 
very  few  would  know  how  to  discover  them.  Gaudi 
replied  that  no  one  would. 

He  affirmed  that  the  helix  is  necessary  for  the  col- 
umn. Nature  corroborated  it  through  the  growth  of 
many  trees,  that  it  produced  helicoidally.. ..Domenech 
I  Montaner,  who  was  talented,  always  decorated  the 
columns  with  helicoidal  forms.  Those  of  the  Sagrada 
Familia  would  not  require  decoration,  because  they 
already  had  a  helicoidal  structure.  Through  being 
daughters  of  a  synthesis  they  already  had  everything, 
and  therefore  required  nothing  extra:  neither  a  base, 
nor  capital,  nor  decoration.^ 

This  account  of  Gaudi's  intentions  for  the  principal 
columns  for  the  Sagrada  Familia  was  first  published  in 
1951,  four  years  before  the  first  built  prototype  of  the 
columns  was  constructed  in  its  intended  location.  It  is  a 
highly  charged  commentary,  revealing  that  Gaudi  himself 


regarded  the  generative  design  aspects  as  undiscoverable 
by  any  architect  not  already  let  into  the  secret:  yet  here 
lies  a  recipe  for  a  cultural  fusion  unparalleled  m  so  small 
a  building  fragment.  Analysis  of  the  nave  columns  reveal 
that  even  the  simplest  architectural  element  of  all  -  the 
column  -  can  encapsulate  a  profound  statement  about  the 
relationship  between  all  western  architectural  styles.  The 
generation  of  these  columns  yields  an  amalgam  of  history, 
culture,  and  function,  making  a  simultaneous  statement 
about  the  reduction  of  ornament  and  functionally  discrete 
components,  the  fusion  of  column  and  beam,  and  the  rela- 
tionship of  the  natural  world  to  the  artificial. 

The  columns  of  the  Sagrada  Familia  Church  are  the  con- 
cluding statements  from  Gaudi,  the  result  of  his  long  ca- 
reer of  experimentation.  The  accompanying  illustrations 
visually  show  the  theory,  described  below,  m  practice. 

Each  column  has  a  profile  composed  of  vaguely  star- 
shaped  convex  and  concave  parabolic  curves  (Figure  5). 
Columns  with  different  performance  requirements  are 
sized  appropriately.  The  proposed  materials  range  from 
sandstone  for  the  least  charged,  to  granite  then  basalt  with 
porphyry  used  for  the  four  large  columns  that  support  the 
towers  over  the  crossing.  We  can  see  from  the  early  stud- 
ies that  Gaudi  abandoned  single  helicoidal  columns  due  to 
their  singular  rotational  appearance.  Instead,  he  proposed 
that  the  columns  would  be  formed  by  two  barley  sugar 
twists  -  each  in  a  different  direction  but  with  the  equiva- 
lent rotation.  The  resulting  column  is  the  intersection 
between  the  two  superimposed  elements  (Figures  7-9).  At 
the  base  are  uninterrupted  curved  profiles,  but  by  the  point 
where  the  two  twists  are  exactly  out  of  phase,  Doric  flutes 
emerge.  Collins  was  the  first  to  bring  this  to  the  attention 
of  English  speaking  readers,  but  failed  to  recognize  an 
astonishing  algorithm  for  the  column  to  continue  beyond 
the  point  where  the  two  twists  would  begin  to  go  back  into 
phase.^  Rather  than  make  an  adaptive  new  profile  for  the 
continuation,  Gaudi  simply  doubled  the  number  of  twisted 
columns.  The  granite  columns  of  eight  'points'  rise  eight 
meters  before  this  midway  point  is  reached.  There,  the  col- 
umns double:  two  continue  twisting  as  the  column  height 
increases,  and  two  twist  back  on  themselves  for  a  further 
four  meters.  At  this  point  -  12  meters  in  total  height  -  the 
individual  columns  are  again  out  of  phase,  at  which  point 
the  four  component  columns  become  eight.  It  is  almost 
as  if  Gaudi  were  hinting  at  cell  division  and  evolutionary 
constructs  (Figure  1 1). 

Do  the  flutes  that  dominate  the  middle  sections  of  the 
column  constitute  a  Doric  abstraction  within  an  otherwise 
Gothic  revival  church?  Here  is  how  one  of  Gaudi's  closest 
assistants  reacts  to  this  question: 


40     Burry 


1^ 


6-polnts  inside  two  equilateral  mangles 


S-points  inside  two  Squares 


lOpoinls  iiuide  two  pentagles 


l2-point5  inside  three  squares 


6  Development  of  profile  for  "8-sided  column" 
showing  fluid  cotangentiol  concave  and  convex 
curve  integration,  Sogroda  Familio 


7  Computer  aided  modelling  studies  of  "8-sided 

column"  showing  the  two  individual  clockwise 

and  anticlockwise  twists,  their  union  and  their 

intersection  (desired  result) 

8  and  9  Model  of  entire  column 


10  and  1  1  Column  twisting  and  branching,  Sogroda  Fomilia 


Burry     41 


When  building  the  Sagrada  Familia  and  studying  other 
churches  he  was  deeply  critical  of  the  Gothic  style  ■  a 
style  that  had  inspired  such  eulogies  from  the  literati 
and  engineers  of  his  youth.  Of  the  Gothic  he  said  that 
it  was  an  imperfect  style,  as  yet  unresolved;  an  indus- 
trial style,  a  mere  mechanical  system;  the  decoration 
was  always  artificial,  and  could  be  eliminated  entirely 
without  it  losing  any  particular  quality.  He  would  say 
sarcastically  that  the  Gothic  was  at  its  best  in  rums 
and  in  moonlight.  In  answer  to  those  who  objected  to 
this  criticism  with,  'But  you  are  building  the  Sagrada 
Familia  m  the  Gothic  style,'  his,  reply  was:  'No,  Sir. 
The  Sagrada  Familia  is  Greek.'  This  seemingly  para- 
doxical statement  has  a  basis  of  truth:  the  Gothic  of 
the  Sagrada  Familia  is  more  apparent  than  real,  for 
its  structure  goes  beyond  it,  and  m  the  positioning  of 
volumes  and  the  resolution  of  details  the  church  has 
never  been  orthodox  Gothic.  Its  original  design  was 
Gothic  with  touches  of  Baroque  ■  which  is  the  same  as 
saying  that  it  was  not  Gothic.'" 

Puig  i  Boada  also  observes  the  following: 

He  used  these  ruled  surfaces  because  he  believed 
them  to  be  the  most  perfect.  'To  conceal  the  imper- 
fect union  between  the  stiles  and  lintel  of  an  opening,' 
he  would  say,  'we  use  capitals,  imposts,  etc.  Nature 
produces  none  of  these  features  to  resolve  the  con- 
tinuity.'" 

The  columns  dispense  with  base  and  capital  in  the  tra- 
ditional sense.  They  elegantly  implicate  the  Doric  order, 
including  the  entasis,  invoking  nature  at  its  most  funda- 
mental -  growth  -  and  lean  quietly  into  the  line  of  force  to 


which  they  are  subjected  (Figure  10).  They  also  point  to 
a  maturity  when  compared  with  the  Pare  Guell  hypostyle. 
Rykwert  notes:  "While  the  refined  'correct'  swelling  of  the 
shaft  called  entasis  is  not  used,  there  are  other  strange 
optical  devices,  thoroughly  'unclassical'  ones:  the  outer 
columns  are  inclined  inward,  like  flying  buttresses,  and 
much  of  the  ornamental  detail  is  improvised."'^  These 
lines  seem  to  refer  to  a  different  Gaudi,  one  who  spent  a 
large  part  of  his  lifetime  attempting  to  get  rid  of  the  fly- 
ing buttress.  Leaving  Laugier's  primitive  hut  and  its  literal 
tree-trunk  columns  well  behind  him,  Gaudi  brought  the 
trees  into  the  interior  of  the  Sagrada  Familia  all  the  same. 

With  a  synthesis  of  nature  fused  to  a  scholarly  love  for  the 
traditions  of  western,  Arab,  and  Mayan  architecture.  It  is 
the  dancing  column  that  Rykwert  seeks.  Ironically  for  the 
detractors  of  the  continued  construction  of  the  Sagrada 
Familia  Church,  the  very  act  of  building,  rather  than  erudi- 
tion and  historiography,  provided  the  opportunity  to  truly 
understand  the  columns.  Just  as  Rykwert  calls  us  to  learn 
from  the  Greeks  in  the  Dancing  Column,  so  too  do  Gaudi's 
dancing  columns  show  us  that  nature  can  be  brought  into 
an  academic  and  not  merely  decorative  dialogue  with  form 
-  a  re-naturing  of  architecture  -  when  others  have  been  in- 
clined to  do  the  opposite.  These  columns  show  that  an  im- 
portant 'message'  can  be  proselytized  with  consummate 
humility  via  the  artifact  alone  -  Gaudi  wrote  absolutely 
nothing  in  words  about  his  work  during  a  career  spanning 
forty-eight  years,  content  with  providing  a  full  testament 
and  last  word  in  brick,  stone  and  metal  -  one  we  have  to 
work  hard  to  unravel. 


Notes 

'  Joseph  Rykwert,  The  Dancing  Column  :  On  Order  of  Architecture.  (Cambridge: 

MIT  Press,  reprint  1998),  373. 

^  Ibid..  373. 

^  Ibid..  391. 

"  Ibid..  18. 

^  Ibid..   27. 

Cezar  Martinell,    Gaudi  i  La  Sagrada  Familia  comentada  per  ell  mateix.  (Barce- 
lona: Editorial  Ayma,  S.L,,  1951).  140. 

^  Juan  Jose  Lahuerta,  Antoni  Gaudi.  1852-1926:  architettura.  ideologia.  e  po- 
lltica.  (Milano:  Electera,  1992),  38-43. 

^Martinell,  127, 

^  G.R.  Collins,  "Antonio  Gaudi:  Structure  and  Form"  m  Perspecta  8  :  The  Yale 
ArchitecturalJournal.  (New  Haven:  Yale  Univercity  Press,  1963),  63-90. 

'    I.  Puig  i  Boada,  The  Church  of  the  Sagrada  Familia.  Ediciones  de  Nuevo  Arte 
Thor  (Barcelona:  first  edition  1929,  rep.  1988),  131. 

"  Ibid..  132. 

'^  Rykwert,  18. 


42     Burry 


David  Gissen 

Bigness  vs.  "Green-ness" 

The  Shared  Global  Ideology  of  the  Big  and  the  Green 


Many  of  the  massive  proposals  for  the  World  Trade  Cen- 
ter site  exhibited  this  past  year  at  the  Winter  Garden  of 
the  World  Financial  Center  contained  references  to  their 
"greenness."  but  of  all  of  the  projects  that  made  such 
claims,  the  proposal  by  Norman  Foster  and  Partners  stood 
out.  The  text  accompanying  Norman  Foster  and  Partners' 
entry  to  the  competition  claimed  that  the  striking  twin-tow- 
er  proposal  "would  be  the  biggest  and  greenest  building 
ever  built."'  Foster's  statement  raises  several  theoretical 
issues:  why  would  an  architect  want  to  achieve  both  of 
these  contradictory  goals,  and  how  can  a  building  be  the 
most  massive  building  ever  built  and  the  most  environmen- 
tally sensitive?  It  would  seem  that  massive  development 
and  environmental  sensitivity  are  contradictory  projects. 
The  unprecedented  scale  of  Foster's  proposal  demands 
a  rethinking  of  the  increased  weaving  of  what  might  be 
called  the  theories  of  the  "big"  and  the  theories  of  the 
"green."  Foster's  project  is  not  alone;  recent  buildings  by 
his  firm  and  buildings  by  many  other  firms  employ  environ- 
mental technologies  and  siting  techniques  at  huge  scales. 
Collectively,  these  projects  force  us  to  understand  why  and 
how  "bigness"  and  "greenness"  are  conflated,  and  how  we 
ever  imagined  these  theoretical  approaches  as  opposed. 


Defining  Bigness  and  Greeness 

The  large-scale  architecture  that  is  the  wake  of  late  20th 
century  globalization  was  first  dubbed  "colossal  architec- 
ture" by  Mario  Gandelsonas  in  1990  and  then  "bigness" 
by  Rem  Koolhaas  in  1993.  Gandelsonas  came  up  with  his 
concept  of  colossal  architecture  by  examining  the  work  of 
Cesar  Pelli  through  the  writings  of  Jacques  Derrida  and 
Saskia  Sassen  (a  well-known  chronicler  of  the  urban  condi- 
tions of  globalization).'  Koolhaas  arrived  at  his  concept  of 
bigness  as  a  way  to  describe  his  firm's  large-scale  architec- 
tural approach  that  was  being  exhibited  at  MOMA  in  1993 
(the  concept  of  bigness  extended  his  critique  of  20th  cen- 
tury urbanism,  first  laid  out  in  Delirious  New  York)?  Both 
"colossal"  architecture  and  "bigness"  described  building 


types  such  as  skyscrapers,  high-rise  buildings,  mid-rise 
buildings,  large-span  buildings,  among  numerous  other 
large-scale  constructions.  Both  Gandelsonas  and  Koolhaas 
claimed  that  these  structures  emerged  from  the  economic 
forces  of  globalization,  forces  that  demanded  universal 
architectural  solutions  for  living  and  working,  and  the  sites 
for  the  production  and  consumption  of  goods. 

Using  Cesar  Pelli's  World  Financial  Center  and  Pacific  De- 
sign Center  as  examples,  Gandelsonas  described  colossal 
architecture  as  an  architecture  of  endless  growth  and  in- 
finite verticality:  "By  cutting  the  towers'  shafts  at  different 
heights,  Pelli  provides  a  way  to  indicate  the  concept  of  the 
infinitely  tall  tower.. ..This  same  concept  of  cutting  some- 
thing infinitely  long  is  present  in  the  colossal  length  of  the 
Pacific  Design  Center,  a  skyscraper  on  its  side. ..the  colos- 
sal implies  the  enormous,  the  immense,  the  excessive,  the 
lack  of  limits:  'the  infinite  is  present  in  it.  It  is  too  big, 
too  large  for  our  grasp,  for  our  apprehension.'""  Koolhaas 
describes  bigness  with  similar  language,  but  in  this  case, 
bigness  is  described  as  architecture  that  uses  technology 
to  realize  a  limitless  interior  space,  disconnected  from  its 
surroundings:  "Together,  all  these  breaks  -  with  scale,  with 
architectural  composition,  with  tradition,  with  transpar- 
ency, with  ethics  -  imply  the  final,  most  radical  break: 
Bigness  is  no  longer  part  of  any  urban  tissue.  It  exists;  at 
most  it  coexists.    Its  subtext  is  fuck  context."^ 

Between  the  1960s  and  the  1990s,  "green"  or  "environ- 
mentally conscious"  architecture  theorists,  such  as  Max- 
well Fry,  Roland  Ranier,  Hassan  Fathy,  Sym  van  der  Ryn, 
attacked  the  same  buildings  and  building  practices  that 
Gandelsonas,  and  particularly  Koolhaas,  used  to  outline 
their  vision  for  a  new  global  architecture.  "Green"  build- 
ing theory  can  roughly  be  surmised  as  an  ideology  that 
professes  the  maintenance  of  local  resources  and  cultural 
building  traditions  through  a  form  of  ecological  and  cultur- 
al mimesis.  In  "Natural  Energy  and  Vernacular  Architec- 
ture," Hassan  Fathy  argues  that  large  buildings  with  their 
equally  large  air-conditioning  packages  are  causing  people 


Gissen     43 


1  Gap  San  Bruno  Headquarters  by  William  McDonough 


to  "forget"  local  responses  to  the  environment.  Fathy  calls 
for  the  use  of  vernacular  low-tech  approaches  to  mitigate 
the  financial  and  environmental  impact  of  large  buildings. 
In  his  book  Livable  Environments,  Roland  Ranier  derided  the 
skyscraper's  and  the  highway's  consumption  of  land,  call- 
ing for  regionally  based,  small  scale  development.  Pictures 
of  German  farmhouses  and  Japanese  gardens  were  used 
as  illustrations  of  a  more  environmentally  sensitive  way  to 
build.  Kenneth  Frampton  has  repositioned  the  ideas  in  his 
famous  "Critical  Regionalism"  essay  and  in  more  recent 
and  explicitly  environmentalist  works  including  his  essay 
"Architecture  and  Ecosophy."  Frampton  continues  to  main- 
tain that  large-scale  speculative  developments  are  at  odds 
with  a  more  local,  climatically,  and  topographically  based 
architecture,  and  that  these  developments  are  responsible 
for  the  destruction  of  unique  landscapes  and  cultural  fea- 
tures.^ 

Frampton,  Fathy,  van  Der  Ryn,  and  Ranier  cite  the  product- 
like nature  of  skyscrapers,  the  "bull-dozing"  of  land,  and 
the  use  of  "artificial  lighting  and  ventilation,"  as  symptoms 
of  rampant  international  development  that  has  gone  out 
of  control.  In  response,  these  thinkers  call  for  humanly 
scaled  buildings  that  incorporate  the  "intimate  knowledge 
of  specific  places"  and  "locally-inflected  tactile  features," 


including  topography,  context,  climate,  and  natural  light. 
This  combination  of  local  features  "jointly  have  the  capac- 
ity to  transcend  the  mere  appearance  of  the  technical," 
while  withstanding  "the  relentless  onslaught  of  global 
modernization."' 


The  Shared  Global  Agenda  of  Bigness  and  Greeness 

Although  the  idea  of  a  "large-scale  global  environmental- 
ist architecture"  would  seem  contradictory,  within  the  past 
five  years  a  number  of  architects  have  made  claims  that 
their  projects  were  both  "big"  (as  outlined  by  Gandelsonas 
and  Koolhaas)  and  "green"  (by  many  of  the  standards 
presented  by  Ranier,  Fathy,  van  der  Ryn,  and  Frampton). 
Architects  such  as  Norman  Foster,  Richard  Rogers,  William 
McDonough,  and  Kenneth  Yeang  claim  that  several  of  their 
recent  projects  simultaneously  owed  their  form  to  the 
forces  of  international  capitalist  development  and  green 
ideology.  Among  the  many  projects,  the  Gap  San  Bruno 
Headquarters  (1996)  by  William  McDonough  (Figure  1), 
and  Menara  Mesniaga  (1996)  by  Kenneth  Yeang  (Figure 
2)  are  significant  "big  and  green"  projects,  particularly 
described  m  this  way.  William  McDonough  describes  Gap's 
San  Bruno  Headquarters  as  a  key  feature  of   his  "green 


44     Gissen 


business  revolution,"  and  Kenneth  Yeang  received  the  Aga 
Kahn  award  for  the  way  he  fit  IBM's  regional  headquarters 
Into  its  Malaysian  ecosystem. 

Numerous  magazines,  architectural  journals,  and  archi- 
tectural Institutions  have  praised  these  projects  for  "tem- 
pering" the  forces  at  work  In  International  business  that 
destroy  context.  On  Kenneth  Yeang's  Menara  Mesiniaga, 
the  jury  of  the  Aga  Kahn  prize  reported:  "designing  with 
the  climate  in  mind,  it  brings  an  aesthetic  dimension  to 
[Menara  Mesiniaga]  that  is  not  to  be  found  in  typical  glass- 
enclosed  air-conditioned  high  rise  building.  The  tower  has 
become  a  landmark,  and  increased  the  value  of  the  land 
around  it.  The  jury  found  it  to  be  a  successful  and  promis- 
ing approach  to  the  design  of  many-storied  structures  In  a 
tropical  climate."®  William  McDonough  often  is  praised  In 
architecture  and  business  magazines  for  showing  that  good 
business  practices  can  incorporate  green  perspectives.  The 
Christian  Science  Monitor  wrote:  "His  statements  encapsu- 
late his  efforts  to  bring  about  a  rapprochement  between 
corporate  America  and  the  environmental  movement.  One 
colleague  in  the  environmental  movement  calls  him  'our 
great  translator,'  because  he  can  defend  the  dreams  of  the 
environmental  movement  with  arguments  that  an  MBA  can 
understand."'  The  "success"  of  McDonough  and  Yeang  is 
largely  due  to  their  ability  to  rectify  what  are  presented  as 
"opposing"  forces  of  greenness  and  bigness  within  con 
temporary  business. 

Yeang  and  McDonough  should  be  praised  for  their  com- 
mitment to  reducing  building  energy  consumption,  their 
sympathy  to  local  resource  availability,  and  their  constant 
Incorporation  of  natural  light  and  air  in  almost  all  of  their 
projects.  Yet  the  oppositional  rhetoric  that  they  have  in- 
herited from  the  early  green  movement,  and  that  they  and 
others  use  to  describe  their  method  of  mediating  "big" 
architecture  needs  to  be  examined.  Rather  than  seeing 
projects  such  as  Menara  Mesiniaga  and  the  Gap  San  Bruno 
building  as  remarkable  because  they  adjust  or  "mediate" 
between  global  business  practices  and  local  and  ecologi- 
cal issues,  these  projects  actually  reveal  the  international, 
global  Ideology  that  big  business  and  envlronmentalism 
often  share.  As  Mark  Jarzombek  so  carefully  argued  in  the 
pages  of  this  journal,  green  technological  systems  became 
a  billion  dollar  business  In  the  1990s,  and  companies 
often  justified  big  green  buildings  as  lowering  the  costs 
of  business.'"  These  important  observations,  force  us  to 
re-think  whether  "green"  architecture  is  a  movement  about 
corporate  resistance,  which  is  how  it  has  been  traditionally 
positioned,  or  whether  it  shares  some  fundamental  feature 
with  the  capitalist  flow. 

Both  the  philosopher  Slavoj  Zlzek  and  the  writer  David  RIeff 
offer  a  new  theoretical  connection  between  the  global  and 


2  Menara  Mesnioga  by  Kenneth  Yeang 


the  local,  an  explanation  which  could  help  reposition  the 
links  between  the  "big"  and  the  "green."  As  Zizek  noted, 
"the  opposition  between  globalization  and  the  survival  of 
local  traditions  is  false.  Globalization  directly  resuscitates 
local  traditions,  it  literally  thrives  on  them.""  Zlzek  here 
Is  talking  about  tourism,  spice  trades,  language  and  cul- 
tural classes,  and  other  Instances  where  business  thrives 
off  what  IS  "local."  David  Rieff  makes  a  similar  argument 
when  he  claims  that  globalization  is  not  a  form  of  "west- 
ernization," as  Is  so  often  claimed.  "Western  Civilization 
does  not  occupy  a  sacred  place  in  the  heart  of  capitalism. 
In  fact,  the  dominant  ideal  of  a  'white,  European  male' 
stands  in  the  way  of  capturing  whole  new  markets  of  non- 
white,  non-European,  non-male  consumers. ...Everything 
Is  commodifiable.. .there  Is  money  being  made  on  all  the 
KInte  cloths  and  Kwanza  paraphernalia."'^ 


Gissen  45 


In  a  related  argument,  Alan  Calquhoun  has  demonstrated 
that  the  supposed  "resistance"  within  a  locally  based, 
small-scale  culture  is  often  false.  What  are  often  called 
vernacular  "responses,"  ideological  systems  that  certainly 
would  not  produce  a  2,000,000  square  foot  office  tower, 
are  nonetheless  often  the  very  same  "products"  of  cultural 
elites.  One  need  not  look  too  far  back  in  history  to  see  the 
way  local  and  vernacular  cultures  are  maintained  as  ways 
to  maintain  cultural  cohesion,  in  the  name  of  centralized 
or  globalized  forms  of  power.''' 

Using  these  arguments  as  a  new  interpretive  framework, 
the  supposed  distance  between  Bigness  and  Green-ness 
might  be  false.  Like  the  American  business  man  who 
learns  what  is  "Japanese"  in  order  to  conduct  a  highly 
competitive  business  in  Japan,  big  projects  now  learn 
the  particularities  of  the  local  in  order  to  better  posi 
tion  the  needs  of  a  business  enterprise.  According  to  a 
thinker  such  as  Slavoj  Zizek  or  David  Reiff,  the  presence 
of  Western  corporations  does  not  automatically  result  in 
the  attitude  "fuck  context";  often  corporations  embrace  the 
local,  and  the  forces  of  globalization  are  often  needed  to 
resuscitate  local  features. 

Menara  Mesiniaga  and  Gap  San  Bruno  have  brought  atten- 
tion to  the  unique  architectures  and  climatologies  of  Ma- 
laysia and  California.  Menara  Mesiniaga  and  Yeang's  other 
realized  Malaysian  towers,  such  as  ABNAMRO,  incorporate 
methods  of  air  ventilation  found  in  traditional  Malaysian 
houses  and  they  incorporate  local  plant  species,  all  in  a 
skyscraper  format.  Gap  San  Bruno's  habitat  roof  for  local 
birds  and  plant  life  has  brought  increased  attention  to  its 
local  Californian  ecosystem  and  put  wildlife  firmly  within 
the  matrix  of  corporate  experience.  Another  big  and  green 
project.  East  Gate,  located  in  Zimbabwe  and  designed  by 
the  Pearce  Partnership,  is  based  upon  termite  mounds 
found  in  Zimbabwe,  which  use  a  form  of  natural  air-con- 
ditioning  to  keep  the  mound  cool.  The  architects  studied 
the  termite  mounds  and  local  houses,  which  also  use  local 
cooling  methods,  and  incorporated  them  into  a  massive 
office  and  shopping  mall  building  made  from  locally  avail- 
able resources  and  covered  with  native  plant  species. 

In  an  effort  to  affirm  the  inherent  resistance  that  green 
architecture  theory  is  supposed  to  offer,  many  green  theo- 
rists might  argue  that  what  is  being  recovered  is  not  the 
"real"  culture,  just  the  one  that  big  business  enterprises 
find  useful.  The  wind-catching  techniques  that  Kenneth 
Yenag  claims  are  based  on  Malaysian  traditions  are  not  the 
"real"  wind-catching  techniques  used  by  "real"  Malaysian 
builders,  because  they  are  only  being  used  for  resource 
efficiency  and  their  cultural  meaning  has  been  lost.  The 
designers  of  Eastgate  are  not  interested  in  maintaining  lo- 
cal ecology  and  are  not  operating  within  a  business  format 


that  resists  the  impact  of  capitalist  production.  The  local 
cultures  that  Alan  Calquhoun  refers  to  are  not  the  type 
green  theorists  want  to  revive,  and  so  on.  But  what  philo- 
sophical system  could  possibly  sort  through  these  types  of 
divisions  without  resorting  to  a  problematic  epistemology? 
These  are  difficult  questions  that  big  and  green  projects 
raise  and  that  must  be  addressed  for  those  green  thinkers 
that  continue  to  position  themselves  against  the  "big." 

A  critical  "big  and  green"  project  is  not  impossible  even 
though  there  are  contradictions  located  within  contem- 
porary big  and  green  theory.  It  is  virtually  impossible  to 
argue  with  any  architect  who  is  interested  in  mitigating  the 
environmental  impact  of  buildings,  especially  large  ones. 
Recent  buildings  such  as  MVRDV's  "Pig  City"  (Figure  4),  a 
multi-story  slaughterhouse,  begin  to  operate  on  an  ideo- 
logical plain  that  acknowledges  the  interdependence  of 
bigness  and  greenness  in  contemporary  forms  of  capital- 
ism. The  architects  of  this  building  do  not  emerge  as  "en- 
nobled" subjects  who  have  tamed  global  forces  by  making 
an  environmentally  sensitive  place  to  destroy  thousands 
of  animals;  rather,  their  building  uses  ecological  think- 
ing to  put  us  in  touch  with  the  brutality  of  contemporary 
agricultural  practices.  MVRDV  demonstrate  how  efforts 
to  be  "good"  environmentally,  result  in  a  larger  and  more 
massive  factory  environment.  Similar  thinking  is  behind 
their  "stacked  garden,"  realized  as  the  Dutch  Pavilion  at 
Expo  2000  (Figure  3).  In  this  exhibition  pavilion  regional 
natural  forms  actually  "de-naturalize"  a  global  building 
type  toward  its  surroundings,  exposing  the  global  ideology 
of  environmentalism,  while  making  a  very  environmentally 
responsible  building,  nonetheless. 

The  fact  that  environmentalism  can  so  easily  be  incor- 
porated or  extend  out  of  21st  century  forms  of  global 
business  practice  may  cause  some  environmentalist  or 
politically  active  architects  to  shrink  away  from  the  big  and 
green  project.  The  fear  is  that  one  might  be  participating 
in  some  larger  unstated  corporate  project,  yet  the  linkages 
between  what  are  imagined  as  opposed  theories  can  be 
embraced  as  part  of  an  evolving  critical  site  of  action. 
Hopefully  we  will  be  able  to  look  to  many  more  architects 
who  examine  the  interdependence  of  the  forces  of  global- 
ization and  environmentalism  on  some  critical  level.  There 
IS  still  much  need  for  an  architecture  that  brings  attention 
to  the  destruction  and  maintenance  of  international  mate- 
rial conditions  and  the  functions  of  international  business. 
The  ideological  issues  and  conflicts  of  Big  and  Green  proj- 
ects should  not  result  in  an  abandonement  of  the  cause, 
but  in  its  constant  re-thinking  and  re-evaluation. 

Author's  Note,  I  wish  to  thank  Rachel  Schreiber  who  provoked  questions  about 
Foster's  pro)ect,  and  forced  me  to  reexamine  many  of  my  arguments  about 
this  subject  (see  Big  and  Green:  Toward  Sustainabiltty  in  the  2 1st  Century,  ed. 
David  Gissen,  Princeton  Architectural  Press  (New  York:  2002)). 


46    Gissen 


1 


3  The  Dutch  Pavillion  at  Expo  2000  and  4  "Pig  City"  both  by  MVRDV 


Notes 

1  The  quote  by  Norman  Foster  is  from  a  video  kiosk  at  the  World  Financial 
Center  exhibition  on  the  proposed  development  of  the  World  Trade  Center  Site, 
It  can  also  be  listened  to  in  an  interactive  website  published  by  the  New  York 
Times:  www.nytimes.com  (May  27.  2003), 

2  Mario  Gandelsonas.  "Conditions  for  a  Colossal  Architecture,"  in  Cesar  Pelli. 
Ed.  Paul  Goldberger.   (New  York:  Rizolli,  1989). 

3  Rem  Koolhaas,  "Bigness."  m  S.M.L.XL.  (New  York:  Monacelli  Press.  1993.) 

4  Gandelsonas.  12. 

5  Koolhaas.  502. 

6  Hassan  Fathy,  "Natural  Energy  and  Vernacular  Architecture:  Principles  and 
Examples  with  References  to  Hot  And  Climates."  from  Theories  and  Manifestoes 
of  Contemporary  Architecture.  Ed.  Charles  Jencks  and  Karl  Kropf.  (London: 
Academy  Editions,  2000),  145.;  Kenneth  Frampton.  "Critical  Regionalism:  Six 
Points  for  an  Architecture  of  Resistance,"  in  The  Anti-Aesthetic.  Ed.  Hal  Foster. 
(Cambridge:  MIT  Press.  1986).  17;  Roland  Ranier,  Livable  Environments.  (Ber 
lin:  Verlag,  1972), 


7  Fathy  145:  Frampton,  17. 

8  Aga  Kahn  Prize.  Jury  Report.  1996;  http://www,akdn.org/agency/akaa/ 
sixthcycie/malaysia.html,  March  2003. 

9  Michael  Fainelli.  "Making  the  Business  case  for  Going  Green,"  Christian  Sci- 
ence Monitor.  October  18.  2001, 

10  Jarzombek.  Mark.  "Molecules.  Money  and  Design:  The  Question  of  Sus- 
tamability's  Role  in  Architectural  Academe,"  in  Thresholds  18.    Spring  1999, 

11  Slavoj  Zizek,  "From  Western  Marxism  to  Western  Buddhism,"  Cabinet  Maga- 
zine. Spring  2001.  pg.  35 

12  I  found  ttiis  quote  organized  in  this  fashion  from  a  decommissioned 
website  run  by  the  English  department  of  Louisiana  State  University  The  full 
article  citation  is  as  follows:  "Multiculturalism's  Silent  Partner:  It's  the  New 
Globalized  Consumer  Economy.  Stupid."  By  David  Rieff.  Harpers  Magazine. 
August  1993,  62. 

13  Alan  Calquhoun,  "Critique  of  Regionalism."  Casabella  Magazine.  630-531, 
pp.  51-55, 


Gissen  47 


Javier  Arbona,  Lara  Greden,  Mitchell  Joachim 

Nature's  Technology 

The  Fab  Tree  Hab  House 


The  Fab  Tree  Hab  concept  resolutely  accumulates  the 
Inscribed  nuances  that  influenced  the  American  Rustic 
period.  Stemming  form  the  Insurgent  writings  of  Thoreau, 
Emerson,  Whitman,  and  Alcott,  America  defined  a  sensibil- 
ity. These  authors  represent  an  early  mode  of  Intention 
that  was  profoundly  ecocentric.  Their  notion  of  dwelling 
was  envisioned  as  retreats,  poets'  bowers,  hermitages,  and 
summer  cottages  in  a  Sylvan  style.  In  1847  that  notion  cul- 
minated m  the  self-made  assembly  of  a  crooked  cedar  and 
honeysuckle  summer  home  by  Thoreau  and  Alcott  for  their 
friend  Emerson  in  the  midst  of  a  cornfield.  This  peculiar 
house  served  as  our  point  of  departure.  Here  traditional 
anthropocentric  doctrines  are  overturned  and  human  life 
Is  subsumed  within  the  terrestrial  environs.  Home,  in  this 
sense,  becomes  indistinct  and  fits  Itself  symbiotically  into 
the  surrounding  ecosystem. 

This  approach  also  draws  from  Jeffersonian  ideologies  in 
regards  to  equalizing  edification  and  ecology.  In  the  mind 
of  Jefferson,  the  measure  of  any  single  human  gesture  was 
Its  contribution  to  the  Individual's  pursuit  of  happiness.  He 
believed  humans  had  natural  rights,  and  devoted  most  of 
his  life  to  a  revolution  ensuring  the  rights  to  agrarianism 
and  education.  This  was  vital  to  a  citizen's  personal  liveli- 
hood in  an  agrarian  economy  within  a  nascent  system  of 
government.  Universal  access  to  education  was  critically 
linked  to  sustenance.  Jefferson  essentially  would  advocate 
ecological  principles  applied  to  human  habitat  so  that  each 
person  could  live  off  the  land  without  detriment.  The  Fab 
Tree  Hab  not  only  attempts  to  provide  a  healthy  biological 
exchange  with  the  inhabitant,  but  also  strives  to  contribute 
in  a  positive  way  to  everyone's  quality  of  life. 

Modern  design  has  essentially  left  behind  these  principles 
of  symbiosis.  Although  many  individual  and  collective 
efforts  towards  "sustainable"  or  "green  design"  of  build- 
ings are  apparent  internationally,  derivative  design  cannot 
address  the  underlying  systemic  nature  of  sustamability. 
Fixing  pieces  of  a  problem  fails  to  address  the  mterplay- 
mg  complexities  of  the  whole,  and  innovation  is  stifled  by 


the  need  to  work  within  given  contexts.  Lack  of  certainty 
in  cause  and  effect  is  often  cited  as  a  reason  for  not  de- 
veloping ecologically  sound  practices,  most  notably  with 
greenhouse  gas  reductions  and  improvement  of  indoor 
air  quality.  However,  the  precautionary  principle  implies 
that  protection  should  be  embraced  deliberately  even  in 
the  face  of  uncertainty.  Thus,  instead  of  incorporating 
materials  that  may  impart  less  impact  to  the  environment 
and  human  health  -  impacts  which  may  remain  uncertain 
m  extent  -  the  Fab  Tree  Hab  design  seeks  to  protect  and 
embrace  the  ecosystem  as  a  source  of  sustamability  in  the 
built  environment.  Just  as  the  modern  biotechnology  revo- 
lution owes  Its  existence  to  the  Intelligence  in  ecosystems 
at  the  molecular  level,  sustainable  technologies  for  homes 
can  also  benefit  from  biological,  natural  systems.  Howev- 
er, starting  at  the  molecular  scale  is  not  necessary.  Rather, 
as  the  intention  of  this  design  explores,  lumber  maintained 
in  its  macro,  living  form  becomes  a  superstructure. 


The  Fab  Tree  Hab 

The  living  structure  single-family  home  and  encompassing 
ecology  are  shown  in  Figure  2.  Tree  trunks  form  the  load- 
bearing  structure  to  which  a  weave  of  pleached  branch 
'studs'  support  a  thermal  clay  and  straw-based  infill.  The 
Fab  Tree  Hab  plan,  shown  in  Figure  6,  accommodates  three 
bedrooms  (one  on  the  second  level),  a  bathroom,  and  an 
open  living,  dining,  and  kitchen  area  placed  on  the  south- 
ern fagade  m  accordance  with  passive  solar  principles. 
Design  details  pertaining  to  structure,  elemental  flows, 
renewal,  raising  the  home,  and  budget  are  explored  m  the 
following  paragraphs. 

1     Structures  of  successive  stages  of  growth  (top) 

2    Fully  mature  living  habitat.    The  exterior  accepts  life  as  in 

any  garden  or  forest.  The  interior  is  constructed  to  provide 

the  traditional  comforts  of  a  warm  and  dry  home. 


48    Arbona,  Greden,  Joachim 


Arbona,  Greden,  Joachim     49 


Structure,  form,  and  growth 

A  methodology  new  to  buildings,  yet  ancient  to  gardening. 
IS  introduced  m  this  design  -  pleaching.  Pleaching  is  a 
method  of  weaving  together  tree  branches  to  form  living 
archways,  lattices,  or  screens.  The  trunks  of  inosculate,  or 
self-grafting,  trees,  such  as  Elm,  Live  Oak,  and  Dogwood, 
are  the  load-bearing  structure,  and  the  branches  form  a 
continuous  lattice  frame  for  the  walls  and  roof.  Woven 
along  the  exterior  is  a  dense  protective  layer  of  vines, 
interspersed  with  soil  pockets  and  growing  plants.  On  the 
interior,  a  clay  and  straw  composite  insulates  and  blocks 
moisture,  and  a  final  layer  of  smooth  clay  is  applied  like 
a  plaster,  as  shown  in  Figure  7,  to  dually  address  comfort 
and  aesthetics.  Existing  homes  built  with  cob  (a  clay  and 
straw  composite)  demonstrate  its  feasibility,  longevity,  and 
livability  as  a  construction  material.  In  essence,  the  tree 
trunks  of  this  design  provide  the  structure  for  an  extruded 
earth  ecosystem,  whose  growth  is  embraced  over  time 
(Figure  1). 


Life-sustaining  flows 

Water,  integral  to  the  survival  of  the  structure  itself,  is  the 
pulmonary  system  of  the  home,  circulating  from  the  roof- 
top collector,  through  human  consumption,  and  ultimately 
exiting  via  transpiration  (Figures  3  and  5).  A  gray  water 
stream  irrigates  the  gardens,  and  a  filtration  stream  enters 
a  living  machine,  where  it  is  purified  by  bacteria,  fish,  and 
plants,  which  eat  the  organic  wastes.  Cleaned  water  en- 
ters the  pond,  where  it  may  infiltrate  the  soil  or  evaporate 
to  the  atmosphere.  Water  consumed  by  the  vegetation 
eventually  returns  to  the  water  cycle  through  transpiration, 
simultaneously  cooling  the  home. 

Fundamental  to  the  flux  of  the  water  cycle  is  solar  radia- 
tion, which  also  drives  heat  and  ventilation  (Figure  7).  In 
the  winter,  sunlight  shines  through  the  large  south-facing 
windows,  heating  the  open  floor-space  and  thermal  mass. 
The  reverse  is  true  in  the  summer,  as  the  crown  of  the 
structure  shades  itself  from  extreme  temperatures,  instead 
using  the  sun's  energy  for  photosynthesis.  Two  levels  of 
operable  windows  set  up  a  buoyancy-driven  ventilative  flow, 
drawing  in  cool  air  at  floor  level.  An  active  solar  hot  water 
system  heats  the  home  through  an  array  of  radiant  floor 
pipes.  Technology  inspired  by  nature  also  explicitly  en- 
gages it  to  provide  water  and  warmth  to  the  habitat. 


some  organism  at  each  stage  of  its  life,  as  illustrated  in 
Figure  4.  While  inhabited,  the  home's  gardens  and  exterior 
walls  produce  food  for  people  and  animals.  The  seasonal 
cycles  help  the  tree  structure  provide  for  itself  through 
composting  of  fallen  leaves  in  autumn.  The  envisioned 
bioplastic  windows,  which  would  flex  with  the  home  as  it 
grows,  would  also  degrade  and  return  to  the  earth  upon 
life's  end,  as  would  the  walls.  Seedlings  started  in  such 
a  nutrient  rich  bed  may  provide  the  affordable  building 
blocks  for  a  new  home  typology,  firmly  rooted  to  place. 
Likewise,  realization  of  living  structures  would  introduce 
forest  renewal  to  an  urban  setting.  Building  of  these 
homes  occurs  throughout  a  longer  time  period,  yet  the 
benefits  are  enjoyed  as  long  as  the  trees  live,  after  which 
another  wave  of  renewal  begins. 


Rethinking  budget 

In  departing  from  the  modern  sense  of  home  construc- 
tion, compilation  of  a  budget  for  this  prototype  inherently 
opens  the  debate  surrounding  decision-making  and  green 
architecture.  It  is  widely  acknowledged  that  life-cycle  cost- 
ing methods  would  provide  more  favor  to  conscientious 
home  designs  by  including  energy  cost  savings  and,  more 
abstractly,  accounting  for  reduction  or  elimination  of  ex- 
ternality costs.  However,  this  falls  short  of  recognizing  the 
compound  and  continuous  value  of  sustainable  housing 
as  an  interweave  of  systems,  and  it  still  places  too  much 
value  on  benefits  received  today  as  opposed  to  tomorrow 
or  100  years  from  now.  By  rejecting  the  tendency  towards 
immediacy  and,  likewise,  first  cost  dependency,  a  true 
representation  of  sustainable  value  can  be  achieved  by 
explicitly  recognizing  the  adaptive,  renewal,  cooperative, 
evolutionary,  and  longevity  characteristics  of  the  home. 
This  design  explores  the  concepts  in  that  debate  by  includ- 
ing all  five  traits. 

At  the  first  stage  of  maturity,  when  the  habitat  is  readied 
for  human  presence,  cost  outlays  are  similar  in  nature  to 
traditional  construction,  yet  much  less  in  magnitude  based 
on  their  local,  natural,  and  edible  qualities.  Clay,  gravel, 
and  straw  can  be  obtained  locally  for  certainly  no  more 
than  the  cost  of  concrete.  Plants  and  vegetation,  many  of 
which  can  be  started  from  seedlings  when  the  structure  is 
originally  planted,  will  come  at  a  nominal  cost.   Installation 


Renewal 

In  congruence  with  ecological  principles,  the  home  is  de- 
signed to  be  nearly  entirely  edible  so  as  to  provide  food  to 


3  Hull  section  illustrates  design  for  water  flows:  o  roof-top 
trough  harvests  water  for  human  use;  the  plumbing  system  is 
positioned  to  provide  for  gravity-induced  flow  and  gray-water 
reuse;  a  composting  system  treats  human  waste  and  will  later 
return  nutrients  to  the  ecosystem. 


50    Arbona,  Greden,  Joachim 


of  heating,  lighting,  plumbing,  electrical,  and  communica- 
tion systems  will  be  no  more  than  that  for  a  typical  home, 
and  should  be  less  due  to  the  systems  integrated  design  of 
natural  ventilation,  gravity  water  flow,  daylighting,  and  pas- 
sive solar  heating.  As  illustrated  by  this  comparative  as- 
sessment, realization  of  a  living  home  certainly  fits  within 
the  realm  of  affordability. 

Extra  or  nontraditional  operating  costs  and  required  ex- 
pertise over  the  lifetime  of  the  home  include  pest  man- 
agement (insects  that  may  threaten  the  structure)  and 
maintenance  of  a  living  machine  water  treatment  system. 
Technical  demonstration  and  innovation  is  still  needed  for 
certain  components,  primarily  the  bioplastic  windows  that 
accept  growth  of  the  structure  and  the  management  of 
flows  across  the  wall  section  to  assure  that  the  interior 
remains  dry  and  critter-free.  All  in  all,  the  elapsed  time 
to  reach  livability  is  greater  than  the  traditional  house,  but 
so  should  be  the  health  and  longevity  of  the  home  and 
family. 


Experiment  in  time 

Above  all,  the  raising  of  this  home  can  be  achieved  at  a 
minimal  price,  requiring  only  some  time  to  complete  its 
structure.  Realization  of  these  homes  will  begin  as  an  ex- 
periment, and  it  IS  envisioned  that  thereafter  the  concept 
of  renewal  will  take  on  a  new  architectural  form  -  one  of 
interdependency  between  nature  and  people. 


Bibliography 

Ahadu  A.  "Tree  House,"  in  The  Architectural  Review:  Emerging  Architecture. 
AR&D  Awards  2002.   December  2002:   60-61. 

Ashford  NA.  "Incorporating  Science.  Technology,  Fairness,  and  Accountability 
in  Environmental,  Health,  and  Safety  Decisions."  adapted  from  "Implement 
ing  a  Precautionary  Approach  in  Decisions  Affecting  Health,  Safety,  and  the 
Environment:  Risk,  technology  alternatives,  and  tradeoff  analysis"  in  The  Role 
of  Precaution  in  Chemicals  Policy,  Favonta  Papers  January  2002.  Freytag  E  et  al 
(eds).  Diplomatic  Academy,  Vienna:  128-140. 

Axelrod  A.  The  Life  and  Work  of  Thomas  Jefferson.  Alpha  Books.  Indianapolis, 
IN.  2001. 

Bell  A.  Plant  Form:  An  Illustrated  Guide  to  Flowering  Plant  (Morphology.  Oxford 
University  Press.  New  York.  1991.   Excavated  Rhizome  System  (p,  130). 

Doernach  R.  Pflanzen-Hauser  Biotektur  Panorama  Verlag,  Munchen,  Germany 
1987.    Brunnen-Sitzlaube  (p.77). 

Dougherty  R  Dixie  Cups  (1998)  and  Headstrong  (2002).  (http:// 
www.5tickwork.net/dougherty/main.html). 


Elizabeth     L     and     Adams     C     (Eds). 
temporary     natural     building     methods. 


Alternative    Construction: 
Wiley      New      York,      NY 


Con- 
2000. 


Eriandson   A.   The   Sycamore   Tower  (image),   (http://www.arborsmith.com/ 
treecircus.html). 

Grow  Your  Own  House.  Vitra  Design  Museum.  2000,    "Bent  Bamboo"  (p.  214) 
and  "Composite  Materials"  (p.  241). 

Living  Machines.  Inc.  Open  Aerobic  Reactor  (http://www.livingmachines.com/ 
htm/machine.htm). 

Maynard  WB.  Architecture  in  the  United  States,  1800-1850.  New  Haven  Yale 
University  Press.  2002. 

Nichols  FD  and  Griswold  RE.  Thomas  Jefferson  Landscape  Architect.  Univer 
sity  Press  of  Virginia,  Charlottesville,  VA.  1978, 

■Pleaching.'  (http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/good_wood/pleachng, htm). 

Reames  R,  Red  Alder  Bench  (image),  (http://www,arborsmith,com/). 


Arbona,  Greden,  Joachim 


4  (Left)  Exterior  of  the  home  embraces  growth  in  its  gardens 
and  with  bioplostic  windows  that  are  envisioned  to  accept 
change  in  physical  size  over  the  home's  lifetime. 

5  (Bottom,  left)  A  bird's  eye  view  of  the  home  shows  the  roof 
top  rain  harvester,  living  machine,  and  site  plan. 

6  (Bottom,  right)  Plan  follows  from  typical  one-bedroom 
Habitat  for  Humanity  plan.  Plan  also  follows  passive  solar 
guidelines,  with  living  areas  located  on  southern  side  to 
maximize  benefit  of  solar  heat  gain  in  winter,  while  exterior 
shading  protects  the  facade  in  the  summer. 


7  (Opposite)  Wall  section  depicts  the  interior,  finished  in  a 
tile-  or  stucco-like  layer  of  clay;  the  natural  ventilation  flow, 
aided  by  the  exterior  vegetation;  and  the  high  thermal  mass 
floor  for  retaining  heat  from  incident  solar  radiation  and  so- 
lar-heated hot  water  pipes  laid  in  the  floor. 


52     Arbona,  Greden,  Joachim 


Arbona,  Greden,  Joachim  53 


Mark  Jarzombek 

Sustainability,  Architecture,  and  "Nature" 

Between  Fuzzy  Systems  and  Wicked  Problems 


Today  there  are  a  range  of  architectural  firms,  both  small 
and  large,  that  specialize  in  environmentally-sensitive 
architecture,  whether  that  be  in  the  form  of  designbuild 
projects,  self-sufficiency  houses,  solar  houses,  eco  villages, 
or  now,  so-called  Health  Houses.  We  have  also  seen  in  re- 
cent years  the  development  of  new  high-tech  materials  and 
sophisticated  software  programs  as  well  as  the  emergence 
of  various  types  of  "green"  consulting  companies,  some 
advising  individuals  on  how  to  place  their  bed  m  relation- 
ship to  Fengshui,  others  advising  multinational  corpora- 
tions on  everything  from  waste  management  to  product 
design.  In  the  last  five  years  or  so  the  word  sustainability 
has  come  into  vogue  as  a  way  to  put  these  disparate  reali- 
ties into  a  single  rubric.  The  most  immediate  reason  for 
the  success  of  the  term  is  that  it  has  allowed  advocates  to 
avoid  the  stigma  of  left-wing  environmental  politics.  To  fill 
in  the  gap,  various  interpretations  of  the  notion  of  sustain- 
ability have  come  forward,  each  with  its  own  implication  for 
the  discipline  of  architecture. 

According  to  John  Dernbach,  a  professor  of  law  at  Widener 
University  and  a  leading  scholar  in  the  area,  sustainability 
means  "freedom,  opportunity,  and  quality  of  life;  more  effi- 
ciency; more  effective  and  responsive  governance;  a  desire 
to  make  a  better  world  for  those  who  follow  us;  a  willing- 
ness to  find  and  exploit  opportunities;  a  quest  for  a  safer 
world;  and  a  sense  of  calling  to  play  a  constructive  role  in 
international  affairs."'  These,  he  argues,  are  not  only  "ba- 
sic American  values,"  but  conform  to  the  principles  of  the 
Earth  Charter  (2000),  which,  according  to  him,  "has  broad 
resonance  among  the  world's  major  religions."^  This  type 
of  definition  presumes  that  the  field  of  environmental  man- 
agement will  become  the  Esperanto  of  government  agen- 
cies and  religious  systems.  It  is  a  heroic  model,  almost  Ayn 
Randian  in  scale.  The  implications  for  architecture,  howev- 
er, are  somewhat  more  prosaic.  Architecture  schools  would 
be  expected  to  produce  a  necessarily  enlightened  class  of 
experts  and  consultants.  Architecture  schools  would  have 
to  shift  towards  the  scientific  edge  of  the  discipline,  given 
that  corporate  and  government  funding  will  go  primarily  in 


that  direction.  Schools  will  also  have  to  add  some  courses 
on  how  to  be  polite  American-style  managers. 

In  contrast,  Lisa  H.  Newton  in  her  book  Ethics  and  Sustain- 
ability (2002)  starts  from  the  opposite  direction,  namely 
from  the  question  of  morality. 

The  first  task  is  to  outline  an  understanding  of  the 
individual  moral  life,  life  in  accordance  with  a  Personal 
Worldview  Imperative,  and  to  show  its  logical  relation- 
ship to  environmental  sustainability."^^ 

To  define  this  Personal  Worldview  Imperative,  Newton  turns 
to  Aristotle's  definition  of  the  polls  to  emphasize  the  prin- 
ciples of  virtue,  goodness,  happiness  and  the  simple  life. 
Her  point  is  that  sustainability  is  not  something  new  to  be 
worked  over  by  teams  of  bureaucrats  and  lawyers,  but  was 
already  foreshadowed  in  the  writings  of  Aristotle,  in  the  life 
of  Christian  monks,  and  in  the  philosophy  of  Buddhism. 
Her  purpose  in  constructing  this  nexus  between  sustain- 
ability and  ancient  philosophy  is  to  detach  the  concept  of 
a  polls  from  the  history  of  the  modern  city,  which  for  her, 
presumably,  is  the  site  of  excess,  greed,  and  immorality. 
As  examples  of  "unsustainable"  practices,  she  points  not 
only  to  pesticide-dominated  agriculture  but  also  to  "our 
problems  with  the  casinos. ..gambling,  pornography  and 
the  like.""  Given  the  stark  difference  between  the  moral 
and  immoral  and  her  insistence  on  a  conservative  notion 
of  self-responsibility,  her  book  resurrects  a  late  19th  cen- 
tury tone,  but  is  updated  to  show  that  the  devil  is  in  the 
details.  When,  for  example,  she  talks  about  the  homes  in 
which  we  live,  she  points  out  that  on  average,  "the  Ameri- 
can single-family  home  emits  16,522.3  pounds  of  carbon 
dioxide  from  its  use  of  electricity  generated  in  plants  that 
burn  fossil  fuels. ..or  about  30,000  lbs. ...per  family."^ 

This  latter  part  of  her  argument  relies  directly  on  the  fan- 
tastic success  that  natural  sciences  have  had  in  teaching 
us  about  our  environment.  Take,  for  example,  the  story 
of  chlorofluorocarbon  gases.  In  1974  two  chemists.  Ma- 
rio Molina  and  Frank  Sherwood  Rowland  published  their 


54    Jarzombek 


research  on  the  threat  to  the  ozone  layer  from  chloro- 
fluorocarbon  gases  that  were  then  used  in  spray  cans  and 
refrigerators.  With  only  pure  molecular  mathematics,  they 
predicted  that  chlorofluorocarbons  were  in  the  process 
of  significantly  depleting  the  ozone  layer.  Though  their 
work,  at  the  time,  was  largely  dismissed  by  industry,  in 
1985  scientists  discovered  that  Indeed  an  ozone  hole  had 
opened  over  the  South  Pole.  This  not  only  proved  the  ac- 
curacy of  their  work,  but  set  in  place  a  series  of  legislative 
battles  that  successfully  curbed  the  use  of  these  gases.  In 
1995,  Molina  and  Rowland  received  the  Nobel  Prize  in 
chemistry. 

These  twenty  years.  1974  to  1995  mark  the  ascent  of 
Natural  Science  to  Social  Philosophy.  It  is  a  philosophy  of 
the  non-Infinite.  And  this  is  the  leverage  for  the  ethicists. 
According  to  them,  we  are  bound  together  in  a  molecular 
environment  from  which  we  have  no  escape.  But  in  dis- 
cussing a  house  on  the  same  terms  as  an  aerosol  can, 
Newton  unites  the  question  of  efficiency  with  that  of  ethics 
in  a  way  that  stretches  the  limit  of  comprehensibility.  Her 
vision  of  sustainability  ends  in  a  technocratic  utopia  that 
either  over-radicalizes  the  situation  by  reducing  everything 
to  an  ethical-functional  criterion  or  under  radicalizes  it  by 
/■gnor/ng  everything  pertaining  to  the  more  complex  aspects 
of  social  and  urban  life. 

Whereas  Dernbach  posits  sustainability  as  a  transpoliti- 
clzed  American  universalism,  Newton  wants  a  neoHellenls- 
tic,  Art-and-Crafts-type  return  to  the  simple  life.  Dernbach 
locates  his  friends  among  a  noble  breed  of  Environmental 
Managers,  Newton  among  the  New  Urbanists.  Dernbach's 
history  belongs  in  the  history  of  "progress";  Newton's  is 
dialectical.  Despite  their  differences,  however,  both  fall  to 
take  Into  account  the  relativism  and  complexity  of  culture, 
life,  and  technology  As  a  result,  the  first  exemplifies  what 
sociologists  describe  as  "a  fuzzy  system."  It  is  composed 
of  heterogeneous  units  that  can  never  be — and  were  never 
meant  to  be — synthesized  and  that  over-reaches  its  prag- 
matics. The  second  is  what  sociologists  describe  as  "a 
wicked  problem,"  one  in  which  conventional  reality  bites 
back,  in  this  case  in  the  face  of  a  utopian  challenge. 

Somewhere  between  the  extremes  of  a  fuzzy  system  and 
a  wicked  problem,  lies  the  work  of  William  McDonough 
and  Michael  Braugart.  Their  book  Cradle  to  Cradle  (2002) 
Is  eminently  readable  and  practical,  and  seems  to  speak 
directly  to  the  question  of  architecture  and  design.  Yet 
here,  too,  are  tacit  underlying  assumptions  on  the  role 
of  architecture  that  should  be  highlighted.  Basically  the 
book  makes  not  one  but  two  "ecological"  arguments.  One 
Is  about  the  endangered  environment  and  is,  of  course. 
Irrefutable.  It  is  more  than  obvious  that  environmental 
degradation  is  accelerating  at  an  alarming  rate.   The  other 


ecological  argument,  however,  is  not  about  nature,  but 
about  social  structure  and  it  comes  into  view  when  the  au- 
thors discuss  "the  cherry  tree"  as  a  model  for  design.  This 
part  of  the  argument  is  adapted  from  the  theory  of  social 
ecology  which  holds  that  social  life,  much  like  plant  life,  is 
ordered  by  'natural'  laws  of  growth  and  metabolism.  The 
necessary  correlate  of  this  view  is  that  human  society  in  Its 
non-natural  formations  is  both  non-social  and  Impersonal. 
The  cherry  tree  that  has  evolved  "over  millions  of  years''*^ 
Is  thus  seen  as  an  object  In  harmony  with  its  environment, 
in  contrast  to  human  history  that  has  only  evolved  over  a 
period  of  a  few  thousand  of  years.  Consequently,  when  we 
think  of  designing  a  building,  so  the  authors  explain,  we 
should  think  "Here's  how  we  imagine  the  cherry  tree  would 
do  It."' 

Though  the  metaphor  of  the  cherry  tree,  while  somewhat 
arbitrary,  Is  not  unproductive,  it  simplifies  and  roman- 
ticizes Darwinian  notions  of  evolution  by  taking  out  of 
the  equation  the  principle  of  the  competition  of  species. 
This  strategy  barkens  back  to  the  evolutionary  theories  of 
Ernst  Haeckel  (1834-1919).  known  to  many  as  the  father 
of  the  term  ecology.  McDonough  and  Braungart  seem  to 
have  translated  his  particularly  bizarre  (and  certainly  con- 
troversial) idea  that  politics  Is  a  form  of  applied  biology 
to  the  idea  that  design  Is  applied  biology.  The  advantage 
of  social  ecology,  however,  was  that  it  took  metaphysics 
out  of  the  game  of  biology;  in  other  words,  nature,  not 
nurture.  But  the  resultant  liberation  of  nature  did  not 
free  science  from  ideological  compulsions.  Nonetheless, 
social  ecology  remained  popular  and  was  taken  up  by  such 
eminent  thinkers  as  Frederick  Jackson  Turner  who  saw  the 
American  frontier  as  a  place  where  over-clvlllzed  Europe- 
ans found  a  renewed  sense  of  health  and  vibrancy  (at  the 
expense  of  the  Indians,  of  course).  A  more  overt  defender 
of  social  ecology  was  Robert  E.  Park  (1886-1966),  founder 
of  the  so-called  Chicago  School  of  sociology.  Park  adopted 
the  now  famous  view  that  the  city  Is  a  'habitat'  and  that  in 
essence  the  big  city  is  where  humanity,  being  out  of  touch 
with  nature,  sets  to  work  to  contaminate  that  habitat. ** 
Though  the  lineages  of  this  to  McDonough  and  Braungart's 
book  are  obscure,  they  are  undeniable,  especially  when  one 
Is  asked  to  compare  the  negative  description  of  industry- 
as-we-know-lt  to  industry-as-understood-byants.  That  the 
authors  picked  the  friendly  leaf-cutters  is  no  accident. 
After  all,  they  live  in  an  organized  way,  are  obedient  and 
ecologically  resourceful.  The  description  ends  with  the 
thought:  "Like  the  cherry  tree,  they  make  the  world  a  bet- 
ter place."'  Does  this  mean  one  goes  from  being  a  good 
ant  to  being  a  good  citizen? 

All  this  would  be  a  bit  humorous  if  it  were  not  for  the  tell- 
tale signs  of  an  underlying  theoretical  position.  They  men- 
tion, for  example,  none  other  than  the  evolutionary  theorist 


Jarzombek    55 


and  Harvard  University  professor,  Edward  Osborn  Wilson, 
famous  for  tfie  book  Sociobiology:  The  New  Synthesis  (1975) 
in  w/hich  fie  describes  the  social  betiavior  of  ants.  The  book 
landed  Wilson  in  the  center  of  a  famous  controversy  that 
even  spilled  onto  the  cover  of  Time  Magazine.  The  con- 
troversy was  not  about  how  ants  behave,  but  about  the 
implications  Wilson  seemed  to  make  about  how  humans 
should  behave.'" 

Sadly,  McDonough  and  Braungart  fail  to  cite  any  reference 
to  this  controversy  or  for  that  matter  to  the  century-long 
debate  about  bio-determmism."  Instead,  they  try  to  con- 
vince the  readers  that  the  Nature  they  see  is  no  more  fear- 
some than  an  ecoexhibit  in  a  science  museum.  This,  of 
course,  disguises  the  radical  polarity  in  their  work  between 
ecologies  that  are  'organized'  and  'disorganized',  and 
between  worlds  that  are  'natural'  and  those  that  are  'un- 
natural.' It  helps  them  ignore  the  principle  of  evolutionary 
conflict.  It  even  helps  them  ignore  the  human  nature  of  so- 
cial existence,  which  is  exactly  the  problem  that  one  finds 


in  the  work  of  Park,  whose  theories  have  been  critiqued  for 
decades  for  neglecting  the  social  and  cultural  dimensions 
of  urban  life. 

Sustainability  is  often  thought  among  lay  members  of  the 
community  as  a  cultural  good  or  as  part  of  the  process 
of  Enlightenment.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the  three  positions 
I  have  discussed  are  grounded  in  ideological  assump- 
tions that  need  to  be  better  understood  before  one  can 
accept  their  architectural  conclusions.  Saving  the  world 
IS  important  and  architecture  has  a  role  to  play  but  the 
map  according  to  which  that  can  be  achieved  is  far  from 
clear.  If  the  choice  were  between  a  world  of  noble  manag- 
ers, conservative  ethicists  and  ecodetermmists,  between 
scientocracy,  technocracy,  and  biocracy,  then  I  would 
think  that  the  concept  of  "sustainability"  still  has  some 
important  lessons  to  learn.  It  may  have  shifted  the  politics 
from  the  left,  but  it  has  not  replaced  it  with  anything  more 
concrete  and  feasible. 


Notes 

1  John  Dernbach,  "Synthesis,"  in  John  C.  Dernbach,  Ed.  Stumbling  Toward  Sus- 
tainability. (Washington.  DC:  Environmental  Law  Institute,  2002).  p.  3.  Dern- 
bach has  written  several  books  on  the  topic  of  sustainable  development  He  has 
also  worked  for  the  Pennsylvania  Department  of  Environmental  Resources. 

2  Ibid.  p.  34. 

3  Lisa  H.  Newton,  Ethics  and  Sustainability  (Upper  Saddle  River,  NJ:  Prentice 
Hall,  2002)  p.  1. 

4  Ibid.  p.  6. 

5  Newton,  p,  60.  Newton  is  Director  of  the  Program  in  Applied  Ethics  at 
Fairfield  University 

6  William  McDonough  ,  Michael  Braugart,  Cradle  to  Cradle  (New  York:  North 
Point  Press,  2002),    p.  84 

7  Ibid  p.  73. 

8  Among  Parks'  numerous  books  are  Human  Communities:  The  City  and  Human 
Ecology  (New  York:  CollierMacmillan.  1952) 

9  Cradle  to  Cradle.  p.80. 

10  Wilson  has  won  the  National  Medal  of  Science  in  the  US  and  the  presti- 
gious Craaford  Prize  from  the  Royal  Swedish  Academy  of  Sciences,  as  well  as 
two  Pulitzers,  the  first  for  On  Human  Nature  (1978)  and  the  second  in  1990  for 
a  scientific  study  of  ants,  written  with  his  collaborator  Bert  Hsildobler. 

11  For  Wilson,  every  facet  of  human  behavior  is  influenced  by  our  genetic 
inheritance.  Opposition  to  to  such  ideas  came  from  various  sources  including 
from  Stephen  Jay  Gould,  who  argued  that  human  reality  answers  to  another 
higher  epistemology. 


56    Jarzombek 


Petur  H.  Armannsson 

Elements  of  Nature  Relocated 

The  Work  of  Studio  Granda 


"Iceland  is  not  scenic  in  the  conventional  European  sense  of 
the  word  -  rather  it  is  a  landscape  devoid  of  scenery.  Its  qual- 
ity of  hardness  and  permanence  intercut  v/\1\-i  effervescent 
elements  has  a  parallel  in  the  work  of  Studio  Granda/" 


The  campus  of  the  Bifrost  School  of  Business  is  situated  in 
Nordurardalur  Valley  in  West  Iceland,  about  60  miles  North 
of  the  capital  city  of  Reykjavik.  Surrounded  by  mountains 
of  various  shapes  and  heights,  the  valley  is  noted  for  the 
beauty  of  its  landscape.  The  campus  is  located  at  the  edge 
of  a  vast  lava  field  covered  by  gray  moss  and  birch  scrubs, 
w/ith  colorful  volcanic  craters  forming  the  background.  The 
main  road  connecting  the  northern  regions  of  Iceland  with 
the  Reykjavik  area  in  the  south  passes  adjacent  to  the  site, 
and  nearby  is  a  salmon-fishing  river  with  tourist  attracting 
waterfalls. 

The  original  building  at  Bifrost  was  designed  as  a  res- 
taurant and  roadway  hotel.  It  was  built  according  to 
plans  made  in  1945  by  architects  Gisli  Halldorsson  and 
Sigvaldi  Thordarson.  The  Federation  of  Icelandic  Co-op- 
eratives (SIS)  bought  the  property  and  the  first  phase  of 
the  hotel,  the  restaurant  wing,  was  inaugurated  in  1951. 
It  functioned  as  a  restaurant  and  community  center  of 
the  Icelandic  co-operative  movement  until  1955,  when 
a  decision  was  made  to  move  the  SIS  business  trade 
school  there  from  Reykjavik.  A  two-story  hotel  wing  with 


Armannsson     57 


hotel  rooms  was  completed  that  same  year  and  used  as 
a  student  dormitory  in  the  winter.  In  1958,  a  detached 
building  was  added  at  the  rear  of  the  complex,  containing 
apartments  for  teachers  and  a  gymnasium.  The  original 
Bifrost  campus  is  a  well-preserved  example  of  1950s 
Icelandic  architecture,  traditional  in  overall  form  but  with 
influences  from  postwar  modern  architecture  evident  in 
plan  and  detail.  An  important  architectural  feature  of  the 
original  buildings  are  massive  retaining  walls  covered  with 
black  lava  stone,  framing  the  entrance  loggia  and  garden 
terrace  and  connecting  the  buildings  to  the  surrounding 
landscape.  In  sharp  contrast  with  the  dark  color  of  the  lava 
are  the  exterior  walls  m  tones  of  white  and  yellow,  roofs 
of  corrugated  steel  painted  in  red,  white  window  frames 
and  panels  of  dark-brown  wood  veneer.  This  combination 
of  materials  and  colors  of  the  original  architecture  has  be- 
come the  hallmark  of  the  place  and  has  been  respected  in 
more  recent  buildings  on  campus. 

In  1988.  Bifrost  became  a  specialized  business  school  at 
the  university  level.  Thanks  to  its  progressive  spirit  and 
popularity  of  its  educational  programs,  the  institution  has 
experienced  massive  growth  in  the  last  few  years.  In  2001, 
the  authorities  of  the  school  invited  three  architectural  of- 
fices to  submit  proposals  for  an  extension  to  the  original 
school  building  to  house  a  lecture  hall,  administrative  and 
faculty  offices,  and  reception  area.  The  addition  was  to  be 
the  first  phase  in  a  major  development  of  the  campus. 
After  a  careful  assessment,  all  three  architects  were  asked 
to  submit  revised  proposals,  whereupon  the  school  board 
unanimously  chose  the  project  of  Studio  Granda  for  its 
innovative  solution  to  the  future  expansion  of  the  school. 
Their  proposal  was  also  appreciated  for  being  compact  in 
scale,  economical,  and  respectful  of  the  existing  buildings 
on  campus. 

The  architecture  firm  Studio  Granda  was  founded  1987  by 
Margret  Hardardottir  and  Steve  Christer  to  carry  through 
the  realization  of  their  first-prize  competition  project  for 
Reykjavik  City  Hall  (1988-92).  Designed  as  the  encounter 
of  the  urban  order  of  the  city  and  the  "natural"  order  of 
the  lake,  the  building  broke  away  from  traditional  symbolic 
and  typological  notions  of  a  town  hall.  Instead,  it  draws 
inspiration  from  places  in  Icelandic  nature  in  material  and 
detail,  most  notably  in  the  entrance  rock-wall  covered  with 
green  moss  with  dripping  water.  The  building  celebrates 
and  enhances  the  visitor's  experience  of  various  nature- 
related  phenomenon:  the  play  of  different  surfaces  of 
water  that  one  is  either  passing  through,  beside,  or  above: 
reflected  winter-daylight  passing  through  at  low  angles; 
windows  that  frame  fragmented  views  of  the  surroundings: 
a  cafe-terrace  that  steps  into  the  lake;  and  small  ramps 
that  allow  ducks  to  pass  on  and  off  the  paved  edge  of  the 
lake. 


In  subsequent  projects,  Studio  Granda  has  continued  to 
work  with  elements  of  nature  relocated  in  the  city,  from 
the  lava-rock  roof  terrace  at  the  Supreme  Court  of  Iceland 
(1992)  to  the  parking  garage  at  Kringlan  shopping  center 
in  Reykjavik  (1998),  which  was  conceived  more  as  a  man- 
made  landscape  than  as  a  building.  In  their  statement  of 
practice  from  1993,  Studio  Granda  defines  architecture  as 
the  emotional  substitute  of  landscape  in  the  present-day 
urban  environment: 

Cities  are  built  testimonies  to  man's  will  to  move  be- 
yond the  limitations  of  nature,  they  are  purpose  made 
machines  to  service  ever  increasing  needs  and  expec- 
tations which  cannot  be  provided  by  a  bush  or  a  rock. 
Within  this  built  environment  architecture  has  become 
the  new  landscape,  a  datum  against  which  everyday 
judgments  are  made.  As  the  singular  most  powerful 
factor  influencing  the  lives  of  city  dwellers,  architec- 
ture has  become  a  synthetic  substitute  for  the  stabil- 
ity of,  say,  a  mountain  and  in  that  role  must  provide 
humankind  with  an  equivalent  sense  of  security.^ 

Bifrost  IS  Studio  Granda's  first  public  project  in  Iceland 
located  in  a  natural  setting  outside  of  the  urban  and  subur- 
ban areas  of  Reykjavik.  Their  response  to  the  situation  in- 
dicates a  different  approach  from  previous  work.  Here  the 
challenge  was  not  to  bring  nature  into  the  building  but  to 
create  a  dense,  urban  place  of  intense  activity  in  the  midst 
of  a  virgin  landscape.  The  currently  completed  building  is 
designed  as  the  first  phase  in  what  is  to  be  a  new  spine  of 
buildings,  planned  to  extend  linearly  in  both  directions  be- 
hind the  original  building,  which  will  retain  its  status  as  the 
representative  face  of  the  college.  The  future  buildings  will 
be  linked  by  a  hallway,  with  the  rooms  orientated  towards 
open  courtyards  in  between,  each  one  a  distinct  color 

Besides  making  a  direct  connection  between  the  previously 
detached  school  buildings,  the  new  addition  is  intended  to 
be  the  heart  of  the  school,  a  place  where  all  its  activities 
are  brought  together.  The  building  is  compact  in  form  and 
highly  efficient  in  the  use  of  space.  Circulation  spaces  are 
low  and  intimate,  with  thoughtfully  placed  skylights  giv- 
ing a  sense  of  place.  The  main  feature  of  the  interior  is 
a  double-height  assembly  room  with  sliding  walls  on  one 
side  and  at  the  rear,  offering  a  range  of  alternative  spatial 
arrangements  with  adjacent  spaces  on  both  levels.  The 
flexibility  of  this  black-box  type  of  room  has  many  practi- 
cal advantages  over  the  conventional  sloping  auditorium 
with  fixed  seating.  The  room  may  be  seen  as  a  further 
development  of  Studio  Granda's  multi-purpose  space  in 
the  renovation  of  the  Reykjavik  Art  Museum  (2000),  with 
its  sophisticated  system  of  barn  door  openings  to  the 
outside.  In  Bifrost,  the  architects  were  able  to  mould  the 
shape  of  the  assembly  room  at  their  own  will,  free  from 
the  orthogonal  constraints  of  an  existing  building.  When 


58    Armannsson 


the  projection  screen  of  the  lecture  room  is  pulled  up,  a 
large  picture  window  appears  behind  with  a  framed  view 
into  the  virgin  landscape.  To  the  side,  a  small  window  down 
by  the  floor  offers  a  view  of  nature  on  a  different  scale, 
contained  and  intimate.  Next  to  the  auditorium  is  the  new 
main  entrance  to  the  school  with  reception  and  administra- 
tive offices  adjacent.  The  work  space  is  open  and  flexible, 
planned  to  accommodate  future  rearrangements  in  accor- 
dance to  changing  needs.  On  the  floor  above  are  faculty 
work  spaces,  meeting  rooms  and  reading  areas. 

The  exterior  of  the  new  building  is  modest  in  appear- 
ance, with  white  cubic  forms  blending  in  to  the  existing 
structures.  One  piece  stands  out.  The  exterior  walls  of  the 
auditorium  are  clad  with  corrugated  copper,  marking  the 
new  entry  from  the  road.  On  the  other  side  of  the  building, 
facing  West,  is  the  former  service  yard,  now  being  remod- 
eled to  take  on  the  role  of  an  academic  quadrangle,  with 
the  main  circulation  spine  of  the  school  running  parallel 
on  one  side.  A  small,  box-like  building  (connected  to  and 
extending  from  the  laundry  block)  marks  another  side  of 
the  space.  Painted  bright  red  on  the  inside,  the  box  houses 
the  school  cafe  and,  at  night,  the  local  pub.  Following  the 
precedent  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  Reykjavik,  the  flat  roofs 
at  Bifrost  are  covered  with  slabs  of  lava. 

The  Bifrdst  School  of  Business  and  the  planning  board  of 
the  local  community  have  recently  commissioned  Studio 
Granda  to  develop  a  framework  plan  for  the  Bifrost  campus 


and  the  surrounding  area.  The  aim  of  the  plan  is  to  form  a 
strategy  for  the  future  expansion  of  the  school  and  seek  in- 
novative solutions  on  how  urban  development  can  take  form 
in  such  a  place,  without  sacrificing  essential  architectural 
and  environmental  qualities.  The  project  raises  challenging 
questions  on  how  to  create  a  pattern  for  urbanization  in  a 
natural  setting,  taking  into  account  the  particular  visual 
characteristics  of  Icelandic  landscape.  The  results  could 
be  interesting,  since  the  question  of  visual  and  architec- 
tural relationship  between  built  form  and  landscape  in  Ice- 
land has  not  previously  been  addressed  as  directly  in  the 
early  stages  of  the  formation  of  a  new  settlement.  Many 
issues  need  to  be  dealt  with,  like  the  inevitable  danger  of 
suburban  sprawl,  uncontrolled  residential  subdivisions  on 
nearby  land,  and  commercial  strip  development  along  the 
main  road.  With  rapid  increase  in  tourism,  Icelanders  are 
confronted  with  the  question  of  how  to  accommodate  new 
development  and,  at  the  same  time,  preserve  the  visual 
quality  and  uniqueness  of  their  natural  landscape.  In  that 
debate,  the  strategy  of  Studio  Granda,  that  of  viewing 
buildings  as  landscape  and  nature  as  part  of  the  archi- 
tect's palette  of  materials,  carries  an  important  message 
about  the  value  of  creative  thinking  in  defining  the  relation- 
ship between  natural  and  man-made  and  the  possible  role 
of  architecture  as  a  mediator  between  the  opposing  poles 
of  conservation  and  development.  The  transformation  of 
Bifrdst  could  become  an  example  that  proves  that  point 
and  sets  the  standard. 


Notes 

1  Sheila  O'Donnell  &  John  Toumey.  In  the  Nature  ol  Things.  Studio  Granda. 
Exhibition  Catalogue.  Reykjavik  Art  Museum.  1995. 

2  A+U.  April  1993. 


Armannsson     59 


1  Reykjavik  City  Hall  (1988-1992) 


2  Car  park,  garden,  and  public  space  at  Kringlan  Shopping  Mall  (1998-1999) 


'-»i*»*fc.^i^- 


-A        ^yjmv  ^ 


"  •■■,li! 


60    Armannsson 


3  Supreme  Court  of  Iceland  (1993-1996) 


Armannsson     61 


4  Reykjavik  Art  Museum  (1997-2000) 


.-dl^^SL 


;^--^^^,  ^  1 1 1 1,1 


sneiding  a 


.^^^ 


^At 


ViOskiptahaskoli  fullbyggflur 


62     Armannsson 


,j£aBS£E3|£.,iSSrsya 


3  Bifrost  Business  School  extension,  cafe  &  quadrangle  (2001-2002) 


Armonnsson     63 


Sanjit  Sethi 

Experimental  Ambulation 

Argument  for  Building  a  Device 


There  is  a  device  that  needs  to  be  built. 

This  device  deals  with  activities  of  an  Individual,  the  ter- 
ritory of  walking,  and  anonymous  urban  spaces.  This 
device  deals  with  navigation  and  sensation  within  the 
context  of  the  ambulatory  experience.  This  device  begs 
the  investigation,  examination  and,  redefining  of  dualities 
and  contradictions  in  previously  held  terms.  Most  impor- 
tantly, the  author  needs  this  device  in  order  to  correct  a 
serious  deficiency  in  his  perceptual  world.  This  is  a  device 
with  ancient  connective  tissue  that  accesses  and  fortifies 
maps  and  systems  in  a  corporeal  manner.  This  document 
Is  both  treatise  and  guidebook  for  the  device,  a  device  that 
needs  to  be  built  without  haste  for  the  urban  ambulator 
while  taking  into  account  historical,  epistemologlcal,  and 
philosophical  reasons  for  the  creation  of  said  device  (and 
others  like  it).  The  nature  of  the  device  is  varied  but  deals 
specifically  with  the  conditions  of  ambulatory  perception. 
This  "machine"  is  both  the  resultant  and  potential  of  many 
machines  -  some  built,  if  in  prototypical  form  -  others  that 
have  yet  to  be  built  but  vital  for  consideration  nonetheless. 
In  looking  at  "a  machine"  It  Is  my  belief  that  out  of  the 
critical  step  of  pursuing  one,  many  variations  will  most 
certainly  follow,  proceed,  Inform,  and  enrich  the  process. 
These  works  deal  with  the  measure  of  perception  from  the 
ground  level  as  well  as  the  re-connection  of  head-based 
perception  systems  to  the  act  of  ambulation. 

The  nature  of  ambulation  throughout  urban  environments 
demands  the  use  of  Instruments  of  perception  that  facili- 
tate the  endeavor.  These  instruments  exist  In  our  person, 
sensing,  generally  from  the  head  region.  This  sensation 
of  walking  -  different  then  the  act  of  walking  -  deals  both 
with  navigation  and  perception.  So  much  urban  informa- 
tion exists  for  the  ambulatory  individual,  but  perception  is 
limited  by  reliance  on  a  perceived  visual  supremacy.  When 
walking,  the  walker  perceives  both  actions  of  the  body 
from  which  motion  emanates  and  the  play  of  the  field  in 
which  the  body  exists.  Perception  of  both  of  these  "zones" 
comes  from  (to  a  large  degree)  the  head  region.    The  act 


of  walking  Is,  then,  not  just  a  dynamic  physical  activity, 
but  a  dynamic  physical  activity  with  a  constant  yet  varied 
relationship  to  the  ground.  Walking  provides  a  constant 
physical  mediation  between  movement  and  rest  (or  the 
state  of  "almost  rest").  When  Michel  de  Certeau  differenti- 
ates between  space  and  place,  the  latter  is  relegated  to 
being  stable  (therefore  somewhat  benign)  and  the  former 
to  being  dependent  on  fluctuating  conventions.  "In  short, 
space  IS  a  practiced  place.  Thus  the  street  geometrically 
defined  by  urban  planning  is  transformed  into  a  space  by 
walkers."' 

Ground  in  an  urban  environment  is  by  its  very  nature 
contradictory,  with  hard,  seemingly  impenetrable  surfaces 
laced  with  orifices  and  fissures.  Layered  in  these  concrete 
and  asphalt  surfaces  are  archives  of  the  act  of  urban  revi- 
sion, re-creation,  encroachment,  and  tacit  acquiescence. 
Within  these  layers  exists  the  information  (some  could  call 
it  detritus)  of  personal  journeys  of  others.  These  others 
may  be  fellow  amublators  or  journey-people  of  other  meth- 
odology, either  way;  they  too  add  to  an  accumulation  Into 
a  territory  which  Deleuze  and  Guattari  called  "the  striated 
space  par-excellence."' 

With  the  internal  focus  of  this  activity  set  aloof  from  the 
region  of  interaction,  the  need  arises  for  considering  what 
It  is  we  miss  in  perceiving  the  ground  from  our  lofty  height. 
Height  gives  one  the  dubious  advantage  of  a  displaced  vi- 
sual, aural,  and  olfactory  perspective,  presumably  clouded 
by  proximity  to  the  Interactive  ground  arena.  However, 
I  posit  that  In  becoming  too  erectus,  we  loose  much  of 
our  understanding  of  the  connectivity  manifest  in  cliches 
like  "being  grounded."  In  being  so  "head  orientated"  are 
we  missing  both  direct  dynamic  perceptions  as  they  are 
occurring  and  the  perception  of  previous  actions  and 
situations  in  the- form  of  a  larger  urban  archive?  One  can 
look  to  language  for  indications  of  our  proclivities  against 
such  consideration.  Such  concepts  of  the  base,  what  is 
beneath  one's  feet.  Is  given  negative  connotations  and  acts 
of  peoples  subjugated,  bowing  their  heads  to  the  ground 


Sethi    65 


In  humiliation,  both  speak  of  this  terrain  as  being  one  of 
uncleanlmess  -  a  space  not  to  be  dwelt  in.  Thus  we  see 
how  people  have  found  ways  to  mediate  this  "base"  ground 
surface  (generally  under  the  guise  of  speed)  in  ways 
mainly  involving  the  use  of  devices  with  wheels  -  bicycles, 
automobiles,  rickshaws,  etc. 

So  here  is  introduced  an  important  aspect  of  my  investiga- 
tion, that  of  a  social  space  and  subsequent  social  act  of 
walking  -  walking  as  a  journey  or  a  communication.  One 
needs  to  ask  first  whether  one  believes  that  there  is  some- 
thing missing  in  the  sensory  experience  of  the  walker,  and 
then  question  the  desire  to  transform  or  access  that  which 
is  unobtainable  by  present  means.  This  desire  then  can  be 
classified  as  a  transformative  one.  The  device  allows  the 
walker  to  become  the  embodiment  of  that  which  s/he  does 
not  possess  naturally  and  is  thus  personified,  or,  perhaps, 
animized.^  It  follows  that  the  transformative  process  is  a 
risky  one  -  not  as  much  from  the  outside  as  from  within. 
For  it  seems  that  true  transformation  inherently  encodes  a 
journey  to  "The  Other." 

My  work  via  the  experimental  ambulation  series  has  dealt 
with  the  engagement  of  ambulatory  activities  in  this 
particular  manner  in  order  to  demonstrate  that  there  is 
a  desperate  need  for  a  new  way  of  perceiving  the  world 

-  that  current  means  of  perception  lead  to  disconnection, 
to  placidity,  to  complacency,  to  apathy.  Of  this  I  feel  most 
certain,  for  I  am  most  at  home  with  these  dulled,  benign, 
sterilized,  pseudo-equivalents  of  sense  and  perception. 
These  attempts  on  my  part  -  rough-hewn,  technical,  con- 
tradictory in  nature,  humorous,  deadly  -  are  the  flailing  of 
someone  with  a  selfish  interest  in  regaining  lost  percep- 
tion in  order  to  retain  some  place  in  the  world.  Needless 
to  say,  I  feel  it  is  a  desperate  attempt  to  convince  others 
that  I  am  some-thing  benign.  It  is,  finally,  an  attempt  born 
out  of  numbness  and  nonconfrontational  behavior  -  an  at- 
tempt born  out  of  wanting  to  undergo  a  personal  sense  of 
erasure.    I  have  placed  in  the  act  of  moving  through  space 

-  in  walking  -  the  hypothetical  hopes  of  not  merely  collect- 
ing information  but  of  having  what  I  find  redefine  how  it  is 
I  perceive.  This  need  to  re-perceive.  to  attempt  to  not  just 
perceive  differently  but  to  perceive  with  a  new  set  of  stan- 
dards, values,  and  re-examined  settings  carries  an  urgency 
akin  to  the  ardor  and  urgency  of  breathing. 


2    Olfactory  Ambulation 


Using  devices,  performances,  diagrams,  and  other  means, 
I  have  attempted  to  reconnect  myself  with  the  world  in 
order  to  feel  less  isolated.  I  have  tried  to  do  this  by  start- 
ing a  type  of  controlled  burn  within  my  perceptive  system 
that  I  had  hoped  would  be  fanned  out  of  control  and  cause 
enough  devastation  to  give  me  the  permission,  the  neces- 
sity, to  rebuild  everything.  I  have  been  looking  for  that 
special  permission  to  rebuild. 


Notes 

1   Michel  de  Certeau.   The  Practice  of  Everyday  Life.    (Berkeley:  University  of 
California  Press,  1984),  117. 

2Gilles  Deleuze,  Brian  Massumi,  Felix  Guattari,  A  Thousand  Plateaus:  Capitalism 
and  Schizophrenia.  (Minneapolis:  University  of  Minnesota  Press,  1987),  478. 

3  Deleuze,  Massumi,  Guattari,  247. 


66     Sethi 


3    (dis)Orientation 


4    Ambulatory  Exercise  with  Bricks 


Sethi  67 


5    The  Vision  Slaved  to  Walking  Device,  prototype 


68    Sethi 


■^R 

6   The  Vision  Slaved  to  Walking  Device 


Sethi  69 


Matthew  Pierce 

Nature  in  a  Middle  State 

A  Library  on  the  East  Boston  Waterfront 


In  East  Boston  near  Maverick  Square  the  water's  edge  was 
once  inhabited  by  buildings  and  piers,  man-made  surfaces 
and  enclosures;  some  built  over  the  water,  some  displacing 
the  water.  The  industries  that  once  utilized  these  structures 
have  largely  gone,  and  what  remains  is  unmaintained,  left 
to  the  weather,  the  sun,  the  water,  the  environment. 

Walking  from  Maverick  Square  toward  Boston  Harbor,  the 
skyline  of  downtown  can  be  seen  above  the  asphalt  espla- 
nade. The  pedestrian  way  is  generously  wide  but  unremark- 
able and  terminates  abruptly  at  a  handrail,  the  water  five 
or  SIX  feet  below.  A  plaque  on  a  stone  shaft  commemo- 
rates something,  and,  if  you  squeeze  awkwardly  past,  you 
reach  a  wooden  pier  that  allows  you  to  walk  another  20 
feet  or  so  out  over  the  water.  To  the  left  is  a  truck  driving 
school,  a  high  fence  surrounding  its  large  expanse  of  un- 
obstructed asphalt  but  devoid  of  the  rumblings  of  idling 
trucks.  Around  this  pier,  the  remnants  of  other  piers  de- 
cay. At  the  shore,  the  old  pier  has  a  surface  of  rotted  gray 
wood,  and  the  boards  slowly  disintegrate,  leaving  behind 
bent  and  rusting  nails  as  the  ground  beneath  gives  way 
to  water.  The  piers  that  are  driven  through  the  water  and 
into  the  soil  beneath  are  held  together  by  spanning  joists, 
but  they  also  fall  off,  eventually  leaving  the  piers  to  stand 
alone  side  by  side,  gently  transmitting  the  movement  of 
the  water  created  by  gurgling  motor  boats  and  wind.  The 
tide  is  low,  exposing  different  colors  of  wood,  silver  and 
splintered  at  the  top,  dark  and  soft  below  where  the  water 
regularly  envelops  the  piers.  To  the  right  of  the  pedestrian 
way  IS  another  high  fence,  on  the  other  side  of  which  can 
be  seen  trees  and  tall,  wild  grass.  "No  trespassing"  signs 
are  posted,  but  a  few  holes  can  be  found  in  the  chain  link 
fence.  On  the  other  side  is  room  to  see  the  city  across  the 
water,  and  the  late  afternoon  sun  is  low,  filtering  through 
the  tall  grass  that  is  blowing  in  the  wind,  the  same  wind 
that  is  moving  the  water  and  the  detached  piers. 

Frequently  I  find  myself  questioning  why  it  is  that  I  have 
chosen  to  study  and  practice  architecture.  In  part  the 
question  comes  from  the  desire  to  connect  what  I  do  with 


what  IS  essential  in  life  -  how  many  steps  removed  from 
some  basic  human  need  is  the  thing  I  spend  most  of  my 
time  doing?  Why  build  at  all?  I  admit  that  at  times  I  wish 
for  the  opportunity  to  live  as  Thoreau,  and  wonder  if  it  is 
still  possible. 

What  is  nature  in  the  city?  Parks  full  of  plants?  Water, 
birds?  Or  what  is  nature  anywhere?  Could  we  broaden  the 
definition  to  say  some  kind  of  connection  to  the  larger 
cycles  of  life,  response  to  'natural'  phenomena?  As  an  ar- 
chitect who  values  the  unspoiled  and  undeveloped  parts  of 
the  landscape,  how  do  I  build? 

Thoreau  is  explicit  in  describing  where  and  with  what  his 
interests  lay.  They  are  firmly  m  the  world  of  the  natural,  un- 
spoiled by  man:  the  woods,  the  ponds,  the  fields,  and  such. 
He  also  describes  the  moments  when  natural  forces  come 
into  contact  with  the  built  environment,  such  as  when  he 
spends  the  afternoon  in  his  cabin  as  it  rains  outside,  and 
speaks  of  how  he  enjoys  it.  Much  as  his  favorable  descrip- 
tions invariably  revolve  around  the  natural  environment,  I 
believe  that  the  essential  things  Thoreau  was  looking  for 
can  be  found  in  the  built  environment,  or  in  some  fuzzy 
edge  where  the  built  and  natural  overlap. 

In  these  zones,  what  is  "natural"  and  "real"  is  not  clear. 
Take  the  land  for  example.  When  there  is  talk  about  how  to 
express  man's  hand  in  shaping  the  earth  there  is  a  stance 
that  this  should  be  expressed  differently,  that  a  distinc- 
tion can  be  made  between  constructed  and  natural.  But 
why  is  that,  and  how  easily  can  we  accurately  make  this 
distinction  today?  Where  does  the  natural  form  of  the  land 
give  way  to  the  man-made?  There  are  obvious  examples  of 
clear  distinction,  but  infinitely  more  that  could  only  truly 
be  made  by  geological  survey  of  the  layers  of  earth  below 
the  surface  and  their  composition. 

The  waterfront  site  in  east  Boston  is  such  an  example.  (In 
fact,  much  of  the  landform  of  Boston  is  manufactured, 
and  the  distinction  between  'real'  and  man-made  is  only 


Pierce     71 


72     Pierce 


recoverable  by  legal  documentation  and  geology.)  Here, 
the  water's  edge  actually  reveals  this  transition  from  built 
to  "natural"  in  a  middle  state.  The  fact  that  parts  of  it 
have  been  built  by  man  is  evident,  but  the  challenge  lies 
in  drawing  the  boundary  without  consulting  a  survey.  It  is 
precisely  this  ambiguity  that  is  so  intriguing,  to  discover 
that  the  ground  you  are  so  certain  of  and  whose  firmness 
and  solidity  you  take  for  granted,  is  actually  hollow.  That 
the  grass  you  are  walking  through  grows  from  cracks  in 
the  asphalt  and  in  places  that  asphalt  disappears  to  reveal 
space,  air  between  what  you  assumed  was  ground  and  the 
water  of  the  harbor  Suddenly  that  clear  boundary  that  you 
could  have  drawn  with  one  line  -  water  on  one  side,  earth 
on  the  other  -  is  blurred. 

One  inconvenience  I  sometimes  experienced  in  so 
small  a  house,  the  difficulty  of  getting  to  a  sufficient 
distance  from  my  guest  when  we  began  to  utter  the 
big  thoughts  in  big  words.  You  want  room  for  your 
thoughts  to  get  into  sailing  trim  and  run  a  course  or 
two  before  they  make  their  port.  The  bullet  of  your 
thought  must  overcome  its  lateral  and  ricochet  mo- 
tion and  fallen  into  its  last  and  steady  course  before 
it  reaches  the  ear  of  the  hearer,  else  it  may  plough 
out  again  through  the  side  of  the  head.  Also,  our  sen- 
tences wanted  room  to  unfold  and  form  their  columns 
in  the  interval.  Individuals,  like  nations,  must  have 
suitable  broad  and  natural  boundaries,  even  a  consid- 
erable neutral  ground,  between  them.' 

I  did  not  grow  up  in  the  city,  and  in  fact  did  not  live  in  one 
until  a  few  years  ago.  Previously  I  had  lived  in  the  moun- 
tains, and  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  in  places  that  showed 


no  evidence  of  man.  In  places  like  this  the  distinction  is 
most  clear  between  "real"  and  man  made  -  the  trail  of  dirt 
and  sometimes  a  small  bridge  are  the  only  marks  he  has 
left.  And  m  these  places  I  have  found  a  degree  of  solace, 
space  for  contemplation.  When  I  moved  to  the  city  and 
began  designing  in  an  urban  environment  I  quickly  recog- 
nized that  I  was  trying  to  bring  nature  into  the  city  with  my 
architecture.  Not  by  including  trees  or  sod  roofs,  but  by 
trying  to  balance  what  I  have  found  to  be  a  human  need  for 
space,  psychological  space,  and  release  from  the  density 
of  urban  living,  space  for  the  individual. 

The  things  we  think  of  as  most  "real"  or  "natural"'  are 
the  things  that  were  created  by  chance.  Some  places  are 
relatively  ordinary,  and  others  spectacular  for  their  beauty 
because  of  its  lack  of  determmacy.  And  in  these  naturally 
occurring  places  there  is  a  sense  of  discovery,  of  not  know- 
ing what  IS  beyond  the  horizon,  and  the  excitement  of  dis- 
covering the  way  so  many  products  of  natural  forces  came 
together  to  produce  a  certain  quality  of  light  or  surface. 

By  conscious  effort  we  may  be  beside  ourselves  in  a 
same  sense.  By  conscious  effort  of  the  mind  we  can 
stand  aloof  from  actions  and  their  consequences:  and 
all  things,  good  and  bad,  go  by  us  like  a  torrent.' 

What  Thoreau  speaks  of  is  the  ability  to  distance  oneself 
from  the  obligations  of  the  world,  to  remove  oneself  from 
the  endless  action  and  reaction  of  daily  life,  to  step  aside 
and  be  an  observer  from  a  distance,  and  this  is  an  experi- 
ence that  is  difficult  to  find  in  the  city.  While  the  allotment 
of   space  for  grassy,  tree-filled  parks  is  appreciated  and 


Pierce    73 


74     Pierce 


necessary,  there  are  essential  components  of  a  connection 
to  nature  that  are  rarely  addressed.  What  I  believe  Thoreau 
IS  describing  is  the  ability  to  gam  perspective,  to  step  out 
of  the  middle  so  as  to  regard  the  vi/hole  and  understand  it 
in  the  grossest  of  terms.  It  is  a  state  of  intense  self-aware- 
ness that  comes  from  the  space,  the  psychological  space, 
for  awareness;  a  space  that  makes  room  for  indeterminacy 
into  our  own  existences. 

In  this  sense  the  typical  idea  of  "nature"  in  the  urban 
environment  is  rarely  addressed.  What  Thoreau  speaks 
of  in  walking  is  the  ability  to  go  where  you  please  without 
concern  for  boundaries,  the  feeling  that  the  whole  of  the 
earth  is  your  own,  and  that  all  is  available  to  you.  Even 
in  his  time  when  there  was  space  for  those  who  desired 
to  live  in  solitude,  what  separated  those  people  from  the 
crowds  was  the  willingness  to  live  a  certain  way  or  endure 
a  certain  length  of  travel.  If  you  want  space  to  yourself 
you  must  be  willing  to  live  or  travel  outside  the  realm  of 
what  most  people  will  endure.  Even  in  the  most  popular 
and  crowded  national  parks  the  number  of  people  declines 
exponentially  with  distance  and  difficulty  of  terrain.  And 
it  IS  in  this  way  that  I  think  this  aspect  of  nature,  or  de- 
tachment from  society  is  achieved  in  an  urban  setting.  To 
merely  provide  the  basic  elements  of  grass,  trees,  flowers, 
and  water  is  a  start,  but  they  can  by  no  means  replace  the 
space  of  contemplation. 


This  project  is  an  effort  to  create  that  space.  It  is  only 
through  focused  observation  that  the  existing  phenomena 
of  the  site  become  apparent  and  appreciated,  and  with 
great  caution  that  this  fragile  and  precarious  landscape  is 
crossed.  The  objectives  of  this  intervention  are  to  create 
a  stable  infrastructure  for  occupation  organized  around 
the  registration  of  phenomena,  and  augment  the  adjacent 
community's  lack  of  access  to  the  waterfront  and  space 
for  meditation,  study,  and  artistic  creation.  A  system  of 
concrete  piles,  walls,  and  beams  has  been  proposed  to 
support  a  fragmented,  socially  self-regulating  landscape. 
Within  this  public  landscape  are  six  small  ateliers,  large- 
scale  sculpture/  fabrication  studios,  and  a  public  library. 
The  landscape  is  elevated  to  allow  space  for  occupation 
between  the  "ground"  and  the  water,  as  well  as  allow  vehic- 
ular service  to  the  larger  studios  and  library.  The  interven- 
tion is  about  nature,  not  in  its  placement  next  to  the  water 
at  the  edge  of  the  city,  but  in  its  efforts  to  connect  its  users 
to  a  sense  of  space.  The  attendant  ability  to  contemplate 
that  Thoreau  found  in  his  woods  I  believe  it  is  still  possible 
to  find  in  the  city. 


Notes 

^  Henry  David  Thoreau,  "Walden."  in  The  Portable  Thoreau.  ed..  Carl  Bode. 
(New  York:  Viking  Press,  1977),  391. 

^  Ibid.,  385  386 


Pierce     75 


Peter  Fritzell 


Reading  the  Man  of  Sand  County 

An  Essay  on  A  Sand  County  Almanac 


Published  posthumously  in  1949,  A  Sand  County  Almanac  by  Aldo  Leopold  is  widely  cited  as  one  of  the  most  influential  nature 
books  ever  published.  Leopold's  chapter  entitled  "The  Land  Ethic "  largely  set  the  philosophical  foundation  for  what  we  now  know  as 
the  conservation  movement.  Part  memoir,  part  record,  part  rumination,  the  book  introduced  the  science  of  ecology  into  the  social 
realm.    -Ed. 


There  are  some  who  can  live  without  wild  things,  and 
some  who  cannot.  These  essays  are  the  delights  and 
dilemmas  of  one  who  cannot. 


Aldo  Leopold, 

(VII)' 


"Foreword"  to  A  Sand  County  Almanac 


In  reading  the  man  of  Sand  County,  as  in  writing  about  his 
figures  of  speech  and  thought,  you  must  be  careful  not  to 
take  your  "wild  things"  too  much  for  granted.  You  must  be 
careful  not  to  assume,  or  not  to  assume  too  much,  that 
your  "wild  things"  are  somehow  out  there  to  be  known  and 
experienced,  if  only  you  could  free  yourself  from  the  here 
and  now,  if  only  you  could  free  yourself  from  the  present 
gaggle,  so  to  speak  -  what  you  might  think  of  as  these 
man-made,  artificial,  and  all-too-civilized  considerations. 

In  reading  the  man  of  Sand  County,  you  must  be  careful 
not  to  assume  too  readily  that  your  wild  things  are  out 
there  m  some  "wildlife  management  area"  or  some  legis- 
latively circumscribed  "Wilderness  Area"  or  some  "Nature 
Center,"  where  things  are  natural  (as  they  somehow  are  not 
here?).  In  reading  the  man  of  Sand  County,  you  must  be 
careful  not  to  allow  your  popular,  knee-jerk,  public-televi- 
sion, "environmental"  mind  to  get  the  better  of  you.  You 
must  be  careful  not  to  be  too  unconscious  in  your  "en- 
vironmental consciousness,"  or  in  your  thoughts  of  how 
liberating  it  would  be  to  get  out  into  nature  for  a  while,  to 
get  away  from  it  all  and  be  free. 

You  know  the  kind  of  unconscious  consciousness  the  man 
of  Sand  County  is  trying  to  suggest,  the  kind  of  mind,  if 
that  IS  what  it  is,  which  doesn't  register  even  a  smile  when 
it  hears  that  "Nature  is  brought  to  you  by  Mobil"  or,  more 
recently,  by  the  Park  Foundation,  Canon,  Ford,  and  TIAA- 


CREF  -  and,  of  course,  by  "viewers  like  you."  You  know  the 
kind  of  mind  that  registers  no  sense  of  incongruity  when  it 
reads  that  "we  have  lost  touch  with  nature"  -  or  worse,  that 
we  are  somehow  alienated  from  nature.  Just  where  might 
such  a  mind  otherwise  find  itself,  do  you  think? 

In  reading  the  man  of  Sand  County,  you  must  stay  on  your 
mental  and  perceptual  toes,  so  to  speak,  and  not  let  your 
mind  wander  too  far.  You  must  not  skip  the  word  dilemmas, 
and  you  must  not  misinterpret  the  word  delights,  as  if  it 
referred  only,  or  even  mainly,  to  the  "delightful"  experience 
of  seeing  or  recalling  a  scurrying  meadow  mouse  on  a  late 
January  day.  Perhaps,  in  fact,  it  will  pay  to  consider  the 
word  essays  -  from  the  Old  French  essai,  meaning  a  trial, 
a  test  -  an  attempt,  an  endeavor  -  a  first  tentative  attempt 
at  learning  -  an  attempt  to  accomplish  or  perform  (as  a 
deed  or  task)  -  as  a  verb,  to  make  an  attempt;  to  under- 
take, or  try  to  do.  So  that  these  essays,  so  understood, 
these  written  attempts,  are  the  delights  and  dilemmas  of 
one  who  cannot  live  without  wild  things,  as  he  cannot  live 
without  essays,  as  no  creature  reading  this  sentence  can 
live  without  wild  things,  however  momentarily,  however 
unknowingly. 

Like  winds  and  sunsets,  wild  things  were  taken  for  granted 
until  progress  began  to  do  away  with  them.  Now  we  face 
the  question  whether  a  still  higher  'standard  of  living'  is 
worth  its  cost  in  things  natural,  wild,  and  free  (vii). 

In  reading  the  man  of  Sand  County,  you  must  be  careful 
not  to  take  too  much  for  granted  your  progress  and  your 
"standard  of  living."  But  you  must  be  careful  as  well  not 
to  take  too  much  for  granted  your  things  natural,  wild, 
and  free.  In  fact,  you  must  be  careful  not  to  take  on  faith 
-  or  not  too  much  on  faith  -  even  your  winds  and  sunsets. 
You  must  be  careful,  because  in  Sand  County  words  often 


76     Fritzell 


mean  both  what  you  rather  habitually  and  unconsciously 
take  them  to  mean,  and  something  else  additional,  often 
something  opposite  and  oppositional.  You  must  be  care- 
ful, because  the  man  of  Sand  County  is  a  man  of  two 
voices,  at  least  -  if  not  even  three  or  four:  For  us  of  the 
minority,  the  opportunity  to  see  geese  is  more  important  than 
television,  and  the  chance  to  find  a  pasqueflower  is  a  right  as 
inalienable  as  free  speech  (vii). 

You  must  be  careful,  because  the  man  of  Sand  County 
not  only  aligns  himself  with  the  apparent  minority  which 
prefers  seeing  geese  to  watching  television,  but  he  also 
aligns  himself  with  an  even  smaller  minority,  the  minority 
(of  which  he  very  much  hopes  you  may  become  one,  and 
thus  participate  in  making  it  an  overwhelming  majority) 
of  those  who  can  see  and  understand  their  "inalienable 
rights"  for  what  they  are,  finally  -  for  what  they  are  when 
they  are  viewed  as  functions  of  nitrate  cycles,  food-chains, 
and  feedback  loops. 

So  that,  even  as  the  man  of  Sand  County  aligns  himself 
with  those  who  prefer  watching  geese  to  watching  televi- 
sion, he  also  aligns  himself  with  those  who  can  see  and  ap- 
preciate their  declarations  of  independence  and  their  "free 
speech"  -  and,  yes,  even  their  Sand  County  Almanac's  -  as 
fundamentally  and  finally  akin  to  birdsong  and  whalesong, 
to  the  territorial  markings  and  howlings  of  wolves,  to  the 
buglmgs  of  cranes  and  the  callings  of  geese,  or  to  what 
you  call  geese. 

To  make  things  worse,  so  to  speak  (You've  only  gotten  to 
the  second  paragraph  of  the  "Foreword,"  after  all,  and 
you're  not  through  with  it  yet.),  you  must  be  even  more 
careful  in  reading  the  man  of  Sand  County  -  because,  even 
as  the  man  appeals  to  your  understanding  of  that  appar- 
ently clear  minority  which  prefers  watching  geese  to  watch- 
ing television,  even  as  he  seems  clearly  to  take  his  stand 
with  that  minority,  he  does  so  in  the  terms  of  the  knee-|erk 
majority.  He  calls  upon  your  conventional,  knee-jerk,  and 
very-much-American  majority-understanding  of  the  differ- 
ences between  nature  and  culture,  geese  and  television, 
natural  and  man-made,  free  and  not-free,  wild  things  and 
progress,  pasque-flower  and  the  American  Bill  of  Rights. 
And  he  thus  draws  conventional,  knee-jerk  distinctions  be- 
tween the  very  kinds  of  things  he  is  otherwise  suggesting 
are  not  nearly,  or  finally,  so  distinct  as  you  habitually  -  and, 
thus,  rather  naturally  -  think  they  are. 

By  now  you  are  almost  certainly  asking  "Why?"  or,  "So 
what's  his  point?"  Why  does  the  man  of  Sand  County  shift 
or  alternate  and  interweave  these  voices,  these  opposed 
and  even  contradictory  views  of  your  geese  and  your  televi- 
sion, your  nature  and  your  culture,  your  animal  and  your 
human?  -  why?,  because  he  knows,  as  every  good  ecologist 


knows,  that  these  distinctions  -  as  between  nature  and  cul- 
ture, or  wild  and  civilized,  or  hemoglobin  and  chlorophyll, 
or  even  between  geese  and  pasque-flower  -  are,  finally, 
neither  more  nor  less  than  distinctions  drawn  by  your  part 
of  what  you  call  your  species,  as  you,  like  other  organ- 
isms, seek  some  short-lived  semblance  of  freedom  from 
want  and  fear  -  because  he  knows  that  these  distinctions, 
which  you  rather  instinctively  draw,  are  finally  quite  kin  to 
the  distinctions  your  geese  make,  and  learn  to  make,  and 
continue  to  try  to  make,  between  grasses  rich  in  nutrients 
and  those  which  are  not,  or  between  hominids  who  are, 
as  we  say,  hunting  geese,  and  hominids  who  are  playing 
golf  or  appreciating  nature  (and  who,  thus,  represent  no 
immediate  threat,  perhaps)  -  because  the  man  of  Sand 
County  knows  that,  finally,  your  conventional,  knee-jerk  dis- 
tinctions between  healthy  and  unhealthy,  between  what  is 
the  case  and  what  ought  to  be  the  case,  are  finally  nothing 
more  or  less  than  devices  which  you  use  in  your  attempts 
to  gam  some  brief  semblance  of  control. 

So  why  does  the  man  of  Sand  County  alternate  and  inter- 
weave these  opposed  and  contradictory  views  of  his  own 
kind  and  other  kinds,  of  his  own  inscriptions  and  the  mark- 
ings or  callings  of  others?  -  because  he  knows,  among 
other  things,  that  no  speech  and  no  thing  (no  goose,  no  an- 
thropoid, no  pasque-flower)  is  free,  and  no  right  inalienable 

-  because  he  knows,  in  other  words,  that  he  is  not  free  - 
but  because  he  also  knows  that  it  is  natural,  and  even  nec- 
essary, for  his  kind  and  your  kind,  and  doubtless  all  other 
kinds,  to  seek  freedom  -  because  he  knows  that  you  and 
he  have  little  choice  but  to  attempt,  however  pathetically, 
to  distinguish  that  which  is  free  from  that  which  is  not-free, 
that  which  is  nutritious  from  that  which  is  not,  that  which 
IS  human  from  that  which  is  not,  that  which  is  useful  or  ac- 
curate from  that  which  is  not,  that  which  is  male  from  that 
which  IS  female  -  because,  however  pathetic  your  attempts 
may  be  in  the  final  analysis,  your  species  and  your  kind, 
will  soon  be  in  fairly  deep  trouble  if  you  do  not  make  these 
distinctions  regularly  and  effectively-because  he  knows,  in 
other  words,  that  these  distinctions  are,  at  once,  artificial 
and  natural,  as  all  artifice  is  natural,  as  a  spider's  web  is 
artificial  and  natural,  as  an  architect's  designs  are  likewise, 
as  whalesong  and  calculus  are  artificial  and  natural  -  si- 
multaneously, as  it  were. 

You  must  be  careful,  then,  in  reading  the  man  of  Sand 
County  -  or  better,  perhaps,   in  attempting  to  read  him 

-  because,  having  appealed  to  your  knee-jerk  understand- 
ing that  wild  things  are  out  there,  free  and  distinct  from 
televisions,  books,  and  words  -  or  having  appealed  to  your 
conventional  understanding  that  wild  things  were  out  there 
in  the  beginning,  and  that  they  are  still  out  there  to  be 
found  and  appreciated,  though  in  diminishing  numbers 
and  quality  -  he  will,  in  the  very  next  sentence,  shift  his 


Fritzell     77 


point  of  view  rather  radically  -  and  suggest,  at  least,  that 
wild  things  were  not  out  there  in  the  beginning  at  all,  that 
they  only  came  to  be  as  wild  things  when  progress  made  it 
possible  for  them  to  be  known  as  wild  things. 

These  wild  things,  the  man  of  Sand  County  now  openly 
admits,  had  little  human  value  until  mechanization  assured  us 
of  a  good  breakfast,  and  until  science  disclosed  the  drama  of 
where  they  come  from  and  how  they  live  (vii).  So  that  it  now 
looks  as  if  wild  things  are  direct,  if  not  necessary,  func- 
tions of  the  very  progress  which  the  man  of  Sand  County 
otherwise  seems  to  be  urging  you  to  query,  and  to  query 
seriously.  So  that  it  now  seems  as  if  the  very  progress 
which  IS  destroying  or  limiting  your  opportunities  to  expe- 
rience wild  things,  IS  the  very  process  that  made  possible 
those  opportunities  m  the  first  place,  that  were  it  not  for 
scientific  progress,  there  would  be  no  wild  things  to  be 
valued  or  devalued. 

You  must  try  to  stay  alert,  so  that  you  don't  get  caught 
napping  -  or  worse,  hibernating.  So  that  when  you  read 
in  "January,"  (or  is  it  now  June?)  that  -  Each  year,  after  the 
midwinter  blizzards,  there  comes  a  night  of  thaw  when  the 
tinkle  of  dripping  water  is  heard  in  the  land  -  you  must  be 
careful  not  to  take  your  midwinter  blizzards  or  your  night 
of  thaw  or  the  tinkle  of  your  dripping  water  too  metaphori- 
cally; and  you  must  be  prepared  to  consider  quite  literally 
the  notion  that  this  tinkle  is  heard  in  the  land,  here  and 
now-because,  if  you  are  not  so  prepared,  you  will  miss  an 
important  part  of  the  strange  stirrings  this  tinkle  brings, 
not  only  to  creatures  abed  for  the  night,  but  to  some  who  have 
been  asleep  for  the  winter  (3)  -  and  perhaps  even  to  others 
who  may  still  be  asleep. 

In  reading  the  man  of  Sand  County,  you  must  be  aware  of 
your  rather  natural  disposition  to  mental  hibernation,  so 
as  not  to  get  caught  being  as  essentially  unconscious  as 
the  apparently  hibernating  skunk  who.  curled  up  in  his  deep 
den,  uncurls  himself  and  ventures  forth  to  prowl  the  wet  world, 
dragging  his  belly  in  the  snow.  You  must  try  to  wake  up  from 
your  preferred  disposition  to  sleep  in  your  mental  den.  You 
must  be  up  to  uncurling  yourself  and  venturing  forth  to 
prowl,  to  follow  the  track  of  this  skunk,  the  track  that  is 
likely  to  display  an  indifference  to  mundane  affairs,  an  indif- 
ference uncommon  at  other  seasons.  In  your  mind's  eye, 
at  least,  you  must  follow  this  track,  this  track  that  leads 
straight  across-country,  as  if  its  maker  had  hitched  his  wagon 
to  a  star  and  dropped  the  reins.  You  must  follow  this  track 
apparently  indifferent  to  mundane  affairs,  though  you  must 
not  yourself  be  too  indifferent  to  these  mundane  affairs,  or 
you'll  miss  the  only  slightly  veiled  analogy  -  the  essential 
kinship,  perhaps  -  between  yourself  as  reading  organism 
and  the  man  of  Sand  County,  if  not  also  the  skunk:    /  fol- 


low, curious  to  deduce  his  state  of  mind  and  appetite,  and 
destination,  if  any  (3). 

You  must  not  miss  the  analogy  and  the  affinity,  or  you  will 
you  lose  track,  as  we  say  -  or  run  the  risk  of  losing  track, 
the  risk  of  losing  track  of  where  and  what  you  are  (ecologi- 
cally, as  you  might  say);  and  you  will  miss  the  sense  that 
January  observation  can  be  almost  as  simple  and  peaceful  as 
snow,  and  almost  as  continuous  as  cold  (4).  Unless  you  stay 
on  your  ecological  and  evolutionary  toes,  unless  you  a  keep 
an  eye  on  where  you  are  and  what  you're  doing,  you  will 
miss  a  good  deal,  if  not  all,  of  the  things  that  may  be  said 
to  be  revealed  by  this  January  thaw  -  by  now  you  might 
even  be  inclined  to  say  this  meltdown  -  the  rather  revealing 
northern  exposure  that  occurs  when,  rather  abruptly  - 

A  meadow  mouse,  startled  by  my  approach,  darts  damply 
across  the  skunk  track.  Why  is  he  abroad  in  daylight? 
Probably  because  he  feels  grieved  about  the  thaw.  Today 
his  maze  of  secret  tunnels,  laboriously  chewed  through 
the  matted  grass  under  the  snow,  are  tunnels  no  more, 
but  only  paths  exposed  to  public  view  and  ridicule.  In- 
deed the  thawing  sun  has  mocked  the  basic  premises  of 
the  microtine  economic  system! 

The  mouse  is  a  sober  citizen  who  knows  that  grass  grows 
in  order  that  mice  may  store  it  as  underground  haystacks, 
and  that  snow  falls  in  order  that  mice  may  build  subways 
from  stack  to  stack:  supply,  demand,  and  transport  all 
neatly  organized.  To  the  mouse,  snow  means  freedom 
from  want  and  fear  (4). 

Oh,  it's  easy  enough  to  see  that  the  organized,  microtine, 
economic  systems  of  mice  (family  name,  Muridae;  sub- 
family Microtinae,  genus  Microtus)  have  been  exposed  by 
this  January  thaw;  and  it's  almost  as  easy  to  see  that  the 
organized,  microtine,  economic  systems  of  humankind 
have  likewise  been  exposed.  What's  not  so  easy  to  see, 
apparently,  unless  you  keep  your  ecological  mind's  eye 
open,  is  that  all  the  other  organized,  microtine  systems  of 
organisms  are  also  being  exposed  -  all  of  them  -  including 
the  one  which  the  man  of  Sand  County  is  here  trying  to  put 
together  to  expose  all  those  others,  and  which  you  likewise 
are  trying  to  put  together,  whether  you  know  it  or  not. 

What's  being  exposed  here  -  by  the  thawing  sun?  -  is  not 
simply  or  only  the  attempted  economics  of  what  we  call 
the  meadow  mouse,  nor  simply  or  only  the  economic 
reasoning  and  systems  of  humankind,  but  any  and  all 
microtine  systems  under  the  sun,  which  one  organism  or 
another,  one  species  or  another,  one  part  of  one  species 
or  another,  attempts  to  organize  and  sustain  m  order  to 
achieve  some  semblance  of  freedom  from  want  and  fear. 
What's  being  exposed  here  are  not  simply  the  efforts  or  ex- 
periments of  meadow  mice  and  economic  man,  but  all  the 
organizing  efforts  of  all  the  organisms,  and  all  the  kinds  of 


78     Fritzell 


organisms,  including  the  efforts  of  ecologists,  mathemati 
Clans,  and  philosophers  of  value,  and  including  as  well  the 
efforts  of  any  writing  or  reading  organism.  Reading,  after 
all,  like  writing  and  speaking  -  like  music  theory  and  land- 
scape architecture,  like  the  systematic  collection  of  data 
and  regression  analysis  -  is  a  matter  of  trying  to  attain 
some  momentary  freedom  from  want  and  fear 

So  that  the  man  of  Sand  County  covers  his  own  tracks,  as 
it  were.  He  acknowledges  the  final  affinity  between  what 
he  IS  trying  to  do  as  writer  and  what  the  meadow  mouse 
IS  trying  to  do.  as  the  economists  and  ethicists  are  trying 
to  do.  as  likewise  the  architects,  as  likewise  the  herbs  and 
shrubs. 

To  the  mouse,  snow  means  freedom  from  want  and  fear  -  for 
a  short  time,  perhaps.  To  the  rough-legged  hawk,  an 
absence  of    snow,   means  freedom  from  want  and   fear 

-  for  a  short  time,  perhaps  (4).  To  the  moose,  a  good 
year's  growth  of  what  you  call  short  aspen,  birch,  balsam, 
dogwood,  water  lilies  -  sunny  days  and  moderate  tempera- 
tures -  an  insulating  blanket  of  snow  in  winter,  but  not  too 
much  -  not  too  many  snowshoe  hares  or,  alternatively,  a 
good  number  of  visiting  snowy  owls  -  not  too  many  wolves 
or  human  beings  -  no  parasites  on  the  brain  -  mean  free- 
dom from  want  and  fear  -  for  a  brief  time,  perhaps. 

And  what  means  freedom  from  want  and  fear,  however  mo- 
mentarily, to  the  man  of  Sand  County?  In  the  first  part  of 
his  essays  (very  roughly,  the  first  half),  the  opportunity  to 
recall  or  imagine  and  think  upon  many,  but  by  no  means 
all,  of  the  elements,  processes,  and  relationships  of  what 
you  might  call  a  local  ecosystem  -  including,  especially,  his 
own  actions  and  functions  in  that  system  -  to  reflect  upon 
the  things  that  may  be  revealed  by  following  a  skunk's 
track,  or  the  cutting  of  a  good  oak,  or  the  life  of  one  par- 
ticular banded  chickadee. 

Each  of  these  reflections  -  and  as  well  the  careful,  crafting 
labor  that  goes  into  creating  them  -  means  for  the  man  of 
Sand  County  some  brief  semblance  of  freedom  from  want 
and  fear.    In  each  of  them,  he  finds  and  takes  some  solace 

-  some  content  and,  therefore,  some  contentment  -  includ- 
ing even  the  kind  of  contentment  that  irony  and  paradox 
may  provide,  if  only  for  a  short  time.  He  takes  and  finds 
pleasure  in  creating  little  exemplary  parables  of  his  life  in 
Sand  County,  little  parabolic  stories,  that,  in  turn,  create 
dilemmas  of  a  kind,  but  dilemmas  that  are  as  often  reas- 
suring as  they  are  troubling. 

Most,  if  not  all,  of  these  parabolic  dilemmas  contain  the 
seeds  of  their  own  logical  or  biological  destruction,  you 
might  say.  It's  kind  of  like  there's  something  that  doesn't 
love  a  wall,  that  wants  it  down,  and  something  else  that's 


bound  and  determined  to  put  it  together,  and  to  try  to 
keep  it  together,  as  long  as  it  possibly  can.  And  so  it  goes 
with  the  man  of  Sand  County  -  even  as  his  mind  reaches 
out  from  the  parabolic  details  of  that  local  ecosystem  to 
geographically  and  historically  more  expansive  reflections 
on  Wisconsin.  Illinois,  and  Iowa  -  Arizona  and  New  Mexico 

-  the  quail  of  Chihuahua  and  Sonora,  the  cheat  grass  of 
Oregon  and  Utah  -  the  rails,  wrens,  mink,  and  grebes  of 
Manitoba  marshes. 

In  "Wisconsin,"  you  find  him  saying:  Thus  always  does  his- 
tory, whether  of  marsh  or  market  place,  end  in  paradox.  The 
ultimate  value  in  these  marshes  is  wildness,  and  the  crane  is 
wildness  incarnate.  But  all  conservation  of  wildness  is  self- 
defeating,  for  to  cherish  we  must  see  and  fondle,  and  when 
enough  have  seen  and  fondled,  there  is  no  wilderness  left 
to  cherish  (101).  When  he  gets  to  recalling  Arizona  and 
New  Mexico,  you  find  him  declaring  that.  It  must  be  poor 
life  that  achieves  freedom  from  want  and  fear  (126);  and  you 
sense  his  wit,  perhaps,  as  you  recognize  that  the  life  that 
achieves  freedom  from  want  and  fear  is  not  poor  life,  but 
non-life  -  the  ultimate  peace,  perhaps,  that  comes  to  each 
of  us  in  our  time. 

Just  as  you  must  be  careful  in  reading  this  man's  cranes 
and  mountains,  so  you  must  be  careful  in  reading  his  Mani- 
toba grebes:  A  sense  of  history  should  be  the  most  precious 
gift  of  science  and  the  arts,  but  I  suspect  that  the  grebe,  who 
has  neither,  knows  more  history  than  we  do  (151).  You  must 
be  careful  not  to  take  your  knee-jerk  "anthropomorphisms" 
too  much  for  granted,  because  the  man  of  Sand  County 
knows  and  depends  upon  your  habits  of  branding  as  an- 
thropomorphic his  grebes  and  his  mountains,  his  meadow 
mice  and  his  wolves;  but  the  man  of  Sand  County  also 
knows  that  all  human  endeavor  is  anthropomorphic,  more 
or  less  by  definition  -  even  (or,  perhaps,  especially)  those 
human  endeavors  m  which  humans  claim  to  escape  their 
anthropomorphism.  With  a  smile,  perhaps,  he  wishes 
them  luck. 

So  what  means  freedom  from  want  and  fear  for  the  man  of 
Sand  County?  It  means  keeping  an  eye  on  himself  and  his 
needs  or  inclinations,  insofar  as  he  possibly  can.  It  means 
rather  constantly  juxtaposing  and  interweaving  two  (or  is  it 
three?)  conflicting  and  interdependent  views  of  what  you 
sometimes  call  nature,  of  human  and  non-human,  of  eco- 
logical systems  and  evolution,  of  culture  and  nature. 

A  part  of  you,  at  this  point,  is  doubtless  saying  or  thinking 
something  like,  "well  what's  the  solution?"  or  "which  is  it?" 

-  "It's  one  or  the  other;  it  can't  be  both."  "It's  either  A  or 
not-A."  Either  this  man  is  a  creature  capable  of  reason,  or 
he's  not.  Either  wild  things  are  out  there,  or  they're  not. 
Either  the  mouse  and  the  mountains  are  metaphors,  or 


Fritzell     79 


they're  not.  Either  the  biolic  pyramid  is  a  mental  image, 
or  it  tells,  m  fact,  how  things  are  out  there  and  in  here. 
Either  the  difference  between  pines  and  birches  is  in  the 
trees,  or  it's  not.  Either  evolution  is  a  theory  and,  hence, 
an  expression  of  human  need,  or  it's  not.  Either  ecologists 
are  gathering  true,  factual  knowledge  of  the  ways  things 
are,  or  they  are  doing  nothing  more  than  playing  their  roles 
m  an  ecosystem.  Either  humans  can  comprehend  evolu- 
tion, or  what  they  call  their  comprehensions  of  evolution 
are  nothing  more  than  attempted  adaptations  of  evolving 
anthropoids.  Either  the  uncertainty  principle  is  a  certain- 
sure  proposition,  or  it's  not.    Either  it's  A  or  it's  not-A. 

Well  it  isn't.  It's  not  either  A  or  not-A  -  not  for,  and  not 
with,  the  man  of  Sand  County.  It's  both-and  -  both  A  and 
not-A  -  or,  more  accurately,  perhaps,  both  "Either-Or"  and 
"Both-And"  -  virtually  all  of  the  time,  or  for  as  much  time 
he  has. 

"But  how  can  he  do  it?,"  you  ask.  How  can  he  live  in  such 
a  condition,  with  such  a  divided  state  of  mind?  How  can 
he  develop  and  assert  the  essential  rightness  of  the  land- 
ethic  -  A  thing  is  right  when  it  tends  to  preserve  the  integrity, 
stability,  and  beauty  of  the  biotic  community.  It  is  wrong  when 
it  tends  otherwise  (225)  -  which  seems  clearly  to  be  his 
solution  to  the  dilemma,  his  final  word,  his  creed,  his  eco- 
logical mantra  -  if  he  really  believes  (or  if  he  also  believes) 
that  all  history  consists  of  successive  excursions  from  a  single 
starting  point,  to  which  man  returns  again  and  again  to  orga- 
nize yet  another  search  for  a  durable  scale  of  values"  (200)? 


How  can  he  so  knowingly  contradict  himself?  How  can  he 
say  that  an  ethic,  ecologically,  is  a  limitation  on  freedom  of  ac- 
tion in  the  struggle  for  existence  (202),  if  he  also  knows  that 
there  are  no  free  actions  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  and 
never  have  been  -  and  more,  if  he  also  knows,  as  he  does, 
that  any  change  or  development  in  ethics  or  science  is  fi- 
nally neither  more  nor  less  than  a  change  in  the  means  or 
devices  that  he  and  others  may  use  in  attempting  to  adapt 
to  the  conditions  in  which  they  struggle  to  exist? 

How  can  he  say  that  a  land  ethic  affirms  the  right  of  soils 
and  waters,  plants  and  animals,  to  continued  existence 
(204)  -  if  he  also  believes  and  knows,  as  he  does,  that  no 
plant  and  no  animal,  and  no  species  of  plant  or  animal, 
and  no  community  of  plants  and  animals  and  soils  and 
waters,  has  anything  thing  like  a  right  to  continued  exis- 
tence -  and  worse,  perhaps,  if  he  also  knows,  as  he  does, 
that  the  continued  existence  of  the  evolving  whole,  even 
its  healthy  existence,  depends  upon  the  mutation  and  even 
the  extinction  of  numbers  (and  whole  classes)  of  its  pres- 
ent members? 

How  can  he  say  logically  that  man  is,  in  fact,  only  a  member 
of  a  biotic  team  (205),  one  of  thousands  of  accretions  to  the 
height  and  complexity  of  the  [biotic]  pyramid  (216),  noth- 
ing more  or  less  than  a  plain  member  and  citizen  of  the 
evolving  land-community,  part  and  parcel  of  evolution  and 
evolutionary  change  -  and  then  say,  in  what  is  virtually  his 
next  breath,  man-made  changes  are  of  a  different  order  than 
evolutionary  changes  (218)? 


How  can  he  say  in  such  an  unqualified  way,  that  [a]  thing 
IS  right  when  it  tends  to  preserve  the  integrity,  stability,  and 
beauty  of  the  biotic  community  (225),  if  he  also  knows 
that  no  biotic  community  has  anything  like  a  dependable 
integrity,  that  no  biotic  community  is  stable,  but  always 
shifting,  changing,  varying  -  and  if  he  also  knows  that 
beauty  and  stability  are  in  the  eye  of  the  beholder,  so  to 
speak  -  that  beauty  and  stability  for  a  meadow  mouse  are 
quite  different  from  beauty  and  stability  for  a  rough-legged 
hawk,  and  that  beauty  and  stability  for  each  of  them  are 
quite  different,  in  turn,  from  what  they  are  for  himself,  if, 
for  no  other  reason,  than  that  he  can  see  a  certain  beauty, 
and  even  some  integrity  and  stability,  in  the  rough-legged 
hawk  which  drops  like  a  feathered  bomb  into  the  marsh  to 
catch  and  eat  some  worried  mouse-engineer  who  could  not 
wait  until  night  to  inspect  the  damage  to  his  well-ordered  world 
(4),  and  which  mouse,  he's  rather  certain-sure,  does  not 
much  appreciate  the  beauty  or  stability  in  the  ravishments 
of  the  hawk  -  and  who  (the  man  of  Sand  County,  now)  also 
knows,  as  he  does,  that  beauty  and  integrity  and  stability 
for  himself  are  quite  different  from  what  they  are  for  Mr 
Babbitt,  or  for  the  people  of  Chihuahua  and  Sonora? 


You  must  be  careful  in  reading  the  man  of  Sand  County, 
because  even  near  the  end  of  his  essays,  his  statements 
often  mean  both  what  you  rather  habitually  take  them  to 
mean,  and  something  else  additional,  often  something  op- 
posite and  oppositional.  So  that  when  he  says,  for  exam- 
ple, that  a  land  ethic  changes  the  role  of  Homo  sapiens  from 
conqueror  of  the  land-community  to  plain  member  and  citizen 
of  it  (204),  you  must  be  careful  not  to  take  your  knee-jerk 
categories  ("conqueror-bad,"  "plain  citizen-good")  too 
much  for  granted  -  because,  within  a  sentence,  the  man 
of  Sand  County  will  modify  and,  in  any  case,  complicate 
the  usual  feedback  loops  upon  which  your  knee-jerk  read- 
ing depends. 

In  human  history,  he  will  say,  we  have  learned  (I  hope)  that  the 
conqueror  role  is  eventually  self  defeating  (204);  and  he  will 
mean  both  what  you  rather  instinctively  take  him  to  mean, 
and  something  else  additional.  He  will  mean,  if  you'll  give 
him  the  phrasing,  not  that  the  conqueror's  role  is  self-de- 
feating while  the  plain  citizen's  is  not,  but  that  both  the 
conqueror's  role  and  the  plain  citizen's  are  self-defeating, 
eventually.  And  he  will  thus  shift  ground  on  you,  as  it  were. 


80    Fritzell 


you  who  are  trying  to  make  sense,  to  conquer  his  meaning, 
to  organize  your  own  microtme  sense  of  things. 

He  will  mean  thus  that  your  conqueror's  role  Is  self-defeat- 
ing, eventually  and  inevitably,  and,  with  a  witty  shift  of 
meaning  (unless,  by  now,  you  are  prepared  for  it)  that  all 
the  efforts  of  all  the  plain  citizens  are  likewise  self-defeat- 
ing -  which,  of  course,  is  a  kind  of  proof  in  the  pudding 
that  the  conqueror  is,  finally,  a  plain  citizen  -  but  the  man 
of  Sand  County  will  also  mean  that  every  organism  must 
act,  and  regularly,  as  if  it  were  a  conqueror,  for  its  own 
sake,  its  specie's  sake,  and  for  the  community's  sake-that 
each  citizen  of  the  land-community  must  act,  and  regular- 
ly, as  if  it  knows,  ex  cathedra,  just  what  makes  the  community 
clock  tick,  just  what  and  who  is  valuable,  just  what  and  who  is 
worthless"  -  even  if  (or,  rather,  because),  it  always  turns  out 
that  it  knows  neither,  and  this  is  why  [its]  conquests  eventu- 
ally defeat  themselves  (204). 

So  that  even  toward  the  end  of  his  essays,  even  as  he  la- 
bors to  shape  his  land-ethic,  even  as  he  puts  together  a  lit- 
tle stack  of  evidentiary  hay  by  thinking  of  how  ethics  have 
developed  over  time,  and  by  considering  the  ecological  and 
evolutionary  functions  of  ethics  -  and  by  making  another 
little  stack  with  the  concept  of  the  biotic  community  and 
the  mental  image  of  the  land-pyramid  -  and  even  as  he 
develops  the  logical  tunnels  between  those  stacks,  and 
between  them  and  that  final  statement  of  his  attempted 
creed  -  even  as  he  puts  together  his  system,  if  you  will, 
he  is  able  to  see  it,  its  premises,  its  evidences,  and  its  ap- 
parent conclusion,  as  microtine,  as  what  it  is,  finally  -  yet 
another  in  that  series  of  successive  excursions  from  a  single 
starting  point,  to  which  man  returns  again  and  again  to  orga- 
nize yet  another  search  for  a  durable  scale  of  values  (200). 


In  the  last  analysis,  the  man  of  Sand  County  lives,  then, 
and  attempts  to  continue  living  in  this  condition,  with  its 
delights  and  its  dilemmas,  pretty  much  in  the  same  way 
your  meadow  mouse  does.  Though  he  knows  his  paradox- 
es and  his  competing  allegiances,  his  conflicting  points  of 
view  -  though  he  knows  that  /(  all  comes  to  the  same  thing, 
finally  (133)  -  he  also  knows  that  he's  pretty  much  bound 
to  go  down  attempting  to  organize,  in  however  microtine  a 
way,  his  life  and  what  you  call  his  thoughts,  in  a  manner 
which  he  hopes  will  be  economical  enough,  but  not  so  sim- 
plistically  economical  as  to  seem  untrue,  or  to  expose  him 
to  unnecessary  risks. 

Finally,  then,  he  can  do  it,  and  he  does  it  in  this  way, 
because,  though  he  knows  that  there  is  something  that 
doesn't  love  a  wall,  and  that  in  due  time  will  bring  the  wall 
down,  he  also  knows  that  there  is  something  else,  of  which 
he  and  his  inscriptions  are  very  much  parts,  something 
which  not  only  loves  a  wall,  but  which  knows  that  walls  are 
essential  to  this  living,  walls  being  about  the  only  things 
that  can  provide  him  or  you  with  any  semblance  of  free- 
dom from  want  and  fear. 

So  that,  as  you  come  toward  the  end  of  your  time  and 
space,  you  find  yourself  recalling  what  a  certain  professor 
of  wildlife  management  said  to  a  class  of  anthropoids  in 
Wisconsin  over  half  a  century  ago:  "Every  living  thing  rep- 
resents an  equation  of  give  and  take.  Man  or  mouse,  oak 
or  orchid,  we  take  a  livelihood  from  our  land  and  our  fel- 
lows, and  give  in  return  an  endless  succession  of  acts  and 
thoughts,  each  of  which  changes  us,  our  fellows,  our  land, 
and  its  capacity  to  yield  us  a  further  living.  Ultimately  we 
give  ourselves."^ 


Notes 

^Aldo  Leopold,  A  Sand  County  Almanac.  (New  York:  Oxford  University  Press, 
1949).  All  quotations  from  A  Sand  County  Almanac  are  italicized.  Parenthe- 
sized page-numbers  refer  to  this,  the  original,  edition. 

^From  a  lecture  Leopold  presented  in  Wildlife  Ecology  118  at  the  University  of 
Wisconsin-Madison  in  the  spring  of  1941.  Quoted  in  Curt  Meine,  Aldo  Leopold: 
His  Life  and  Work.  (Madison:  University  of  Wisconsin  Press.  1988),  413-414; 
and  in  Susan  Flader  and  J.  Baird  Callicott,  eds..  The  River  ol  the  Mother  of  God 
and  Other  Essays  by  Aldo  Leopold.  (Madison:  University  of  Wisconsin  Press. 
1991).  281 


Fritzell     81 


Mark  Goulthorpe 

Notes  on  Digital  Nesting 

A  Poetics  of  Evolutionary  Form 


Bachelard's  Poetics  of  Space  articulates  the  need,  beyond 
Bachelard's  own  scientific  rationalism,  for  a  discourse  of 
poetic  Imagination,  of  the  onset  and  affectivity  of  the  cre- 
ative image.  His  concern  Is  less  to  catalogue  or  even  de- 
scribe spatial  experience  than  to  develop  a  discourse  that 
might  be  adequate  to  account  for  the  Instigation  of  the 
creative  impulse  and  of  the  power  of  the  resultant  "poetic 
image."  For  Bachelard  felt  that  the  philosophical  tradition 
of  which  he  was  very  much  a  part  -  that  of  an  essentially 
positivist,  scientific  rationalism  -  was  inadequate  to  com- 
prehend, much  less  propitiate,  such  "poetic"  works. 

In  order  to  clarify  the  problem  of  the  poetic  image 
philosophically,  we  shall  have  recourse  to  a  phenom- 
enology of  the  imagination...  Only  phenomenology 
-  that  is  to  say,  consideration  of  the  onset  of  the 
image  in  individual  consciousness  -  can  help  us  to  re- 
store the  subjectivity  of  images  and  to  measure  their 
fullness,  their  strength  and  their  transubjectivity' 

Bachelard's  Poetics  is  scandalous  in  that  from  within  the 
scientific-rational  camp  he  articulates  a  discourse  that 
portrays  its  systematic  cultural  inaptitude,  a  structural 
deficiency  that  he  forcefully  breaches  In  his  Insistence  that 
the  essential  renewal  of  cultural  imagination  is  achieved 
otherwise.  The  central  mandate  of  the  Poetics  being  that 
any  account  of  the  actuality  of  poetic  works  -  of  their  oc- 
curance  and  the  wrench  of  expectation  that  they  engender 
-  cannot  be  reduced  to  generality  or  precedent  in  causal 
scientific  manner.  His  deployment  of  an  extended  phe- 
nomenological  reverie  then  explores  the  implication  of 
spatial  models  in  the  nascent  expansion  (the  "flare-up")  of 
imagination  In  a  variety  of  poetic  works.  His  focus  Is  noth- 
ing less  than  the  birthing  of  new  cultural  potential  -  of  the 
"birth  of  language"  as  he  calls  it  -  that  Is  inscribed  within 
certain  charged  moments  of  creative  immanence. 

It  occurred  to  me  in  reading  the  Poetics,  written  (in  1958) 
in  large  part  to  counter  the  surgeance  of  causal  scientific 
discourse,  that  in  a  period  of  similarly  frenetic  technical 
territorialization  (as  the  influence  of  digital  technologies 


become  insistently  felt).  Bachelard  may  well  provide  an  In- 
teresting counterpoint  to  understanding  and  perhaps  reori- 
enting current  thought.  Evidently  this  would  be  to  look  for 
salient  "poetic"  (cultural)  and  not  merely  scientific-rational 
itectinical)  proponents  of  the  digital  revolution. 

In  this  we  should  be  careful  to  articulate  the  relation  be- 
tween literary  and  architectural  forms;  indeed,  If  we  were 
to  follow  Bachelard  precisely,  we  would  talk  not  of  forms 
but  of  images,  the  Poetics  focusing  on  the  affect  of  a  poem 
rather  than  its  specific  form,  for  which  he  uses,  carefully, 
the  term  "image."  It  is  not  just  the  emergence  of  an  Im- 
age, but  its  capacity  to  exert  an  Influence  on  other  minds, 
that  captivates  Bachelard  as  the  essential  cultural  moment. 
Perhaps  such  usage  gives  credibility  to  the  current  produc- 
tion of  architectural  "images"  -  frequently  dismissed  as 
mere  graphics  -  where  the  experimental  architects  of  the 
present  look  to  attain  (and  not  infrequently  achieve)  such 
affectivity,  redolent  of  a  new  cultural  potential  emerging  in 
the  interstices  of  a  new  digital  medium.  The  architectural 
image,  then,  as  a  condensation  of  formal,  social,  and  tech- 
nical potential,  might  well  serve  as  a  parallel  to  the  "full" 
poetic  moment  that  Bachelard  highlights,  so  long  as  the 
creative  process  is  not  abrogated  by  a  narrowly  focussed 
rationalism  (such  as  a  myopic  focus  on  a  particular  soft- 
ware or  process).  Yet  doubtless,  given  the  dominance  of 
"soft-thmking,"  where  the  potential  of  a  given  software  is 
accepted  as  demarcating  the  creative  horizon,  such  birth- 
ing IS  rare. 

[In  many  of  dECOi's  projects  -  the  Pallas  House,  the  Gate- 
way to  the  South  Bank,  the  Aegis  Hyposurface,  etc  -  we  are 
indeed  looking  to  express  not  so  much  an  architecture,  as 
the  possibility  of  an  architecture,  a  "reverie"  as  to  a  new 
(digital)  condition.  We  deliberately  develop  multiple  cre- 
ative threads  that  weave  into  a  final  architectural  form,  fre- 
quently allowing  the  process  to  lead  where  it  will  to  exceed 
in  some  manner  our  rational  preconception.]  It  seems  to 
me  that  the  power  of  certain  projects  by  Lynn,  Nox,  Novae, 
etc.  (who  I  cite  as  examples  of  architects  who  develop  their 


82     Goulthorpe 


architecture  through  a  "phenomenologlcally"  rich  creative 
discourse)  may  well  lie  In  their  capacity  as  "images"  rather 
than  In  their  "prudence"  as  actualisable  architectural 
works,  such  images  then  seemingly  legitimised  by  the  Po- 
etics. What  would  remain  is  for  the  onset  of  such  "im- 
ages" to  be  accounted  for,  the  thinking  of  the  digital  itself, 
and  It  Is  here  that  we  might  expect  a  quite  marked  shift  in 
creative  manner  if  we  are  attentive  to  the  impact  of  digital 
technologies.  Or  rather,  it  remains  to  be  seen  how  digital 
production,  steeped  in  discourses  of  scientific  rationalism 
of  the  type  that  Bachelard  dismissed  as  Inadequate  for  a 
poetics  to  emerge,  yet  which  proffers  entirely  new  genres 
of  creative  possibility,  might  offer  sufficient  scope  for  a 
genuine  cultural  morphogenesis. 

Doubtless  such  an  inquiry  is  an  interminable  and  immense 
one,  since  it  concerns  the  patterns  of  creativity  latent  in 
digital  production,  yet  I  share  Bachelard's  concern  to  in- 
terrogate the  very  manner  of  creative  imagining.  Here  I 
restrict  my  interest  to  examination  of  a  single  text,  John 
Frazer's  Evolutionary  Architecture,  through  consideration  of 
Bachelard's  phenomenologlcal  "opening."  Frazer's  work  is 
perhaps  the  preordinate  expression  of  an  emergent  "digi- 
tal" discourse,  and  a  pioneering  attempt  at  the  definition 
of  a  new  architectural  language,  as  well  as  new  patterns  of 
creativity,  which  justifies  the  juxtaposition  of  two  such  ap- 
parently heterogeneous  texts  (both  are  accounts  of  evolv- 
ing patterns  of  cultural  imagination). 

Yet  Frazer's  book  Is  nakedly  scientific/rational  in  its  pre- 
scriptive manner,  which  Bachelard,  attentive  to  the  birthing 
of  poetic  imagination,  repeatedly  suggests  as  being  Inap- 
propriate to  cultural  "evolution."  Yet  given  the  newness  of 
the  field,  Frazer's  text  is  not  only  one  of  the  only  ones  that 
we  have  to  consider,  but  seemingly  exceeds  is  own  scienti- 
flclty  in  offering  many  points  of  departure  for  drifts  into  a 
Bachelardian  daydreaming... 

Bachelard's  reverie  on  Shells  perhaps  provides  a  counter- 
point, where  his  Interest  "to  experience  the  Image  of  the 
function  of  inhabiting"  may  be  contrasted  with  the  simple 
will  to  shell-form,  which  he  derides.  For  Bachelard,  the 
mesmeric  geometries  of  shells,  their  outer  appearance, 
actually  defeat  the  imagination:  "the  created  object  Itself 
IS  highly  intelligible:  It  is  the  formation,  not  the  form,  that 
remains  mysterious."^  The  essential  force  of  the  shell  be- 
ing that  it  IS  exuded  from  within,  the  secretion  of  an  organ- 
Ism;  It  Is  not  fabricated  from  without  as  an  Idealized  form. 
The  shell  Is  left  in  the  a[r  blindly  as  the  trace  of  a  convulsive 
absence,  the  smooth  and  lustrous  Internal  carapace  then 
exfoliating  In  Its  depth  of  exposure  to  the  air,  a  temporal 
crustation. 


Such  inversion  of  Ideological  tendency,  an  expansive  men- 
tal shell-emptiness,  Bachelard  captures  dellclously:  "the 
mollusc's  motto  would  be:  one  must  live  to  build  one's 
house,  and  not  build  one's  house  to  live  In!"'  Such  inver- 
sion would  seem  to  be  a  recipe  for  a  genetic  architecture, 
on  condition  that  its  secretions  are  unselfconsclous  and 
"felicitous",  obeying  an  internal  law.  This  describes  the 
generative  process  outlined  by  Frazer  in  Evolutionary  Ar- 
chitecture, which  becomes  one  of  open-ended  formulaic 
experimentation,  Frazer  deploying  genetic  algorithms  to 
generate  all  manner  of  "architectural"  forms.'' 

However,  Bachelard  then  dwells  on  the  voluptuous  in- 
scrutability of  the  exposed  Inner  shell,  which,  born  of  an 
impalpable  Inner  logic,  provokes  an  imaginary  dementia 
Faced  with  the  shell's  indifferent  beauty,  poetic  imagina 
tion  involuntarily  conjures  endless  series  of  grotesques 
emergent  forms  that  slide  expansively  In/out  of  the  curva 
ceous  yet  inexpressive  void.  The  shell  seems  to  demand 
that  IS,  an  appreciation  of  an  impulsion,  a  force  of  egress 
which  IS  somehow  trapped  in  the  geology  of  the  form,  a 
latent  trauma.''  I  have  the  sense,  if  only  as  a  subtle  shiver 
in  Bachelard's  phenomenologlcal  lyricism,  that  the  process 
of  formation  is  left  as  a  mental  material  residue  that  then 
bends  imagination  to  its  logic;  which  would  be  the  fully  cul- 
tural wager,  the  poetic,  of  such  improbable  forms.  Frazer's 
grotesques,  by  contrast,  provoke  no  such  traumatic  impul- 
sion, lacking  a  cultural  qualification  other  than  their  techni- 
cal feasibility.  Certainly  Frazer  suggests  that  such  genesis 
requires  a  "natural  selection,"  but  never  offers  sufficient 
parameters  or  process  of  selection,  which  Bachelard's 
processural  sensibility  would  doubtless  require  to  be  fully 
developed  as  a  Poetics  of  Evolutionary  Form. 

Yet  if  the  empty  shell  conjures  grotesques,  by  virtue  of 
such  Implosion  of  determinism,  the  Poetics  seems  to 
carry  an  uncanny  presentiment  that  as  the  shell-form  be- 
comes technically  feasible  such  grotesqueness  will  not  be 
generated  by  an  Impelled  Imagination,  but  simply  as  an 
abridged  evolution,  never  attaining  the  force  of  image.''  And 
It  is  here  that  an  evolutionary  architecture,  if  it  is  to  crystal- 
lize a  new  "function  of  inhabiting,"  needs  to  cup  its  ear  to 
the  whispering  shell,  attaining  in  its  creative  imagining  a 
felicity  that  separates  it  from  an  aborted  genetic  process, 
and  the  means  of  deploying  its  algorithmic  and  parametric 
(digital)  propensity  to  material  effect. 

We  might  note,  wryly,  the  dis-slmulating  geometry  of  the 
Frazer  Spiral,  which  Is  an  opti-kinetic  figure  that  impels 
a  vortex-effect  simply  through  the  use  of  non-concentric 
circles.  The  figure  Is  a  well-known  trompe  I'oeuil,  exceed- 
ing the  geometric  closure  of  such  simplistic  generic  form 
through  its  vertiginous  disturbance  of  optic  sense,  stimu- 


Goulthorpe    83 


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The  Blue  Gallery 

Challenged  to  reimagine  the  "neutral" 
space  of  art,  the  Blue  Gallery  developed 
as  an  amorphous  interior  carapace  split- 
ting and  twisting  around  an  existing  col- 
umn, as  if  all  the  perspectivol  lines  of  the 
ubiquitous  white  box  had  been  dragged 
to  earth.  The  shells  were  developed  over 
time,  stretching  to  fill  the  existing  space, 
but  wrapping  as  a  continuous  panoramic 
surface  of  subtly  sweeping  curves.  They 
were  not  rationalized  or  optimized  other 
than  to  limit  the  curvature  where  paint- 
ings were  to  be  floated:  frequently  there 
are  5-sided  lofted  elements  which  we 
found  impossible  within  the  parameters 
of  existing  software.  Just  as  the  curves 
developed  according  to  an  open-ended 
exploratory  process,  so  the  shells  mate- 
rialized as  a  gradually  hardening  logic, 
subject  to  exploration  throughout  the 
process.  The  complex-curved  surfaces, 
layered  in  tensile  materiality  (aluminium 
tube  overlayed  by  twisted  laths  of  air- 
craft ply)  trapped  a  temporal  quality,  the 
diligence  and  material  sensibility  of  the 
workers  captured  in  the  striated  pattern- 
ing-in-time,  ground  smooth  prior  to  the 
application  of  a  thin  shell  of  fibreglass. 
It  was  as  if  the  energy  of  fabrication  had 
condensed  into  form. 


The  artists  of  the  gallery  demanded  its 
demolition  some  three  days  after  the 
opening,  as  if  trauma  inhabited  the  shell: 
a  precise  indeterminacy  or  force  that  was 
palpable. 


lating  an  almost  haptic  mental  experience.  Evolutionary 
Architecture  mighit  be  seen  to  be  deploying  simplistic  "geo- 
metric" figures  to  similarly  mesmeric  effect,  but  nonethe- 
less exhibiting  a  keen  awareness  that  it  is  the  processural 
capacity  of  a  digital  medium  that  is  its  most  compelling  at- 
tribute. And  evidently  in  its  prescription  of  an  open-ended 
"evolutionary"  process  it  dreams  of  becoming  unabridged 
in  the  potential  richness  of  genetic  algorithmic  process.' 

Yet  if  Frazer  speaks  as  if  from  withm  the  clam,  dissimulat- 
ing its  genetic  (processural)  secrets,  he  nonetheless  seems 
to  spit  out  the  pearl  of  subjectivity,  dispersing  the  creative 
impulse  throughout  the  body  of  the  new  medium,  creativ- 
ity and  not  simply  receptivity  becoming  transsubjective.  It 
is  as  if  the  phenomenological  belief  in  substance  (whether 
as  word,  act,  or  gesture),  m  the  essential  presence  of 
imaginative  impulse,  suddenly  dissolves  into  a  swirl  of 
sedimentary  digits.  Henceforth  cultural  imagination  sifts 
this  informatic  sea,  bereft  of  a  belief  m  any  point  of  ulti- 
mate legitimacy.^  Herein  lies  the  struggle  between  intellect 
and  sediment,  which  the  ever-descending  digital  norms  are 
apt  to  blanket. 

Bachelard's  chapter  on  Nests  seems  to  similarly  articulate 
forms  that  were  pre-digitally  imaginary  but  which  now  mer- 
it consideration  in  their  actuality  by  architects.  He  muses 
on  the  nest  as  an  intricate  imprint  of  the  inhabiting  body, 
adjusted  continually  as  a  soft  cocoon  that  outlines  the  aura 
of  movement  of  the  bird's  rounded  breast.  This  raises 
the  spectre  of  an  environment  adapting  to  our  bodies  and 
continually  recalibrated  to  suit  the  vulnerability  of  our  rela- 
tion to  the  environment.  Such  forms  of  "dry  modelling," 
merging  camouflage  and  comfort  in  a  density  of  ambient 
"stuff,"  seem  suggestive  of  an  alloplastic^  relation  between 
self  and  environment,  moderated  by  an  endlessly  rede- 
fined digital  matrix.  The  empty  nest,  like  the  shell,  carries 
an  unknowing  impulsion,  a  trauma,  as  if  an  interminable 
and  complex  three-dimensional  weaving  had  been  inter- 
rupted. Such  forms  of  absence,  as  images  of  the  function 
of  habitation,  offer  a  cultural  correlative  to  the  temporal 
generative  processes  of  Evolutionary  Architecture,  outlined 
by  frazer  in  essentially  rational  terms. 

Evolutionary  Architecture  claims  inspiration  from  natural 
processes  (in  fact  from  scientific/rational  models  of  evo- 
lutionary process)  by  way  of  exploring  the  creative  pos- 
sibilities offered  by  a  rapidly  developing  digital  technology. 
It  redeploys  scientific  models  and  patterns  by  considering 
digital  systems  as  analagous  to  genetic  ones,  taking  essen- 
tially analytical  tools  as  opportunities  for  speculative  cre- 
ative endeavour.  Bachelard,  concerned  as  a  philosopher 
of  scientific  rationalism  to  account  for  the  actua/ evolution 
of  creative  process,  is  evidently  unconvinced  that  any  such 
analogy  Is  adequate  for  the  attainment  of  a  "poetic"  im- 


age, highlighting  the  need  for  more  profound  forms  of 
cultural  imagining  that  his  phenomenological  reverie  sets 
out  to  explore.  In  The  Poetics  of  Space  he  outlines  an  ex- 
pansive discourse  that  interrogates  all  manner  of  spatial 
conditions,  concrete  and  imaginary,  which  he  finds  at  work 
"felicitously"  in  wide  range  of  poetic  works.  In  this  he  also 
insists  on  accounting  for  the  effect  of  the  work,  which  is 
in  marked  contrast  to  Frazer's  apparent  disinterest  in  the 
result  of  an  essentially  automatic  praxis. 

However,  Bachelard  would  be  the  first  to  dismiss  "in- 
tentionality"  as  offering  any  guide  to  cultural  value,  and 
would  doubtless  be  intrigued  by  such  "unmtentioned"  and 
speculative  technological  experimentation.  My  interest 
in  re-reading  Bachelard's  "natural"  spatialities  (the  shell 
and  the  nest)  then  being  to  offer  another  reading  on  the 
general  impulsion  of  Evolutionary  Architecture,  but  from  the 
perspective  of  a  discourse  of  bodily  desire  (that  of  the  Poef- 
ics).  This  IS  to  neither  legitimate  nor  denigrate  Frazer's 
work,  since  although  I  find  no  "image"  in  the  book  that  is 
adequate  to  Bachelard's  appellation,  I  nonetheless  recog- 
nize the  pertinence  of  such  research  and  the  inevitability 
of  such  "creative"  processes  in  a  digital  economy.  Much 
rather,  recognizing  less  technically  proficient  but  more  po- 
etically charged  works  emerging  in  Frazer's  wake  (some  of 
which  I  have  mentioned),  I  am  eager  to  implicate  the  felic- 
ity of  Bachelard's  thought  into  an  emergent  digital  praxis. 

It  may  seem  dysfunctional  to  blow  1950s  Poetics  up  the 
trouser  leg  of  a  marching  digital  scientism,  but  Evolution- 
ary Architecture  is  simply  there,  prescribed  in  delightfully 
human/spatial  terms  in  Bachelard's  lyrical  text.  Invoking 
the  poetic  heresy  of  the  philosopher  of  scientific  rational- 
ism also  serves  to  head  off  the  simple  acceptance  of  the 
automatism  of  creative  praxis  that  believes  that  we  can 
design  a  shell  from  without,  or  that  nests  may  be  created 
without  the  restless  body  of  the  warm  bird!  Or,  one  plainly 
can,  but  that  essential  quality  of  nest  and  shell  (that  I 
have  referred  to  as  "traumatic")  becoming  tempered  in  the 
abrocation  of  its  genetic  process. 

But  most  crucially,  perhaps,  in  such  re-reading,  is  the  ac- 
knowledgment that  spatial  imagination  is  still  a  legitimate 
concern  of  all  creative  fields  (I  use  Bachelard  to  think 
through  digital  forms),  and  that  is  continually  evolving. 
Just  as  the  unattainable  spatial  categories  of  nest  and 
shell  were  sought  out  and  inhabited  by  an  active  1950s 
imagination,  so  digital  imagination  (for  which  shell  and 
nest  seem  the  most  pre-eminent  spatial  figures,  suddenly 
feasible  in  crude  form)  requires  new  images  of  spatial 
habitation.  Frazer  looks  continually  to  a  level  of  molecular 
spatiality,  the  void  within  atomic  theory,  almost  literally 
seeking  to  inhabit  the  abstract  models  of  scientific  dis- 
course and  the  data-scapes  of  a  now  temporal  encryption. 


86     Goulfhorpe 


I  therefore  float  the  thought,  within  such  a  digital  sea,  of 
the  possibility  of  a  poetics  ot  evolutionary  form  at  a  potential 
moment  of  genuine  cultural  birthing. 

The  nest,  for  Bachelard.  is  a  primal  formlessness  that  is 
balanced  between  a  physical  insecurity  and  a  daydream  of 
repose.  He  inquires  as  to  the  basic  instinct  that  diligently 
builds  in  spite  of  such  precarious  duality,  and  concludes 
that  the  nest  constitutes  an  essential  optimism,  "the  ori- 
gin of  confidence  m  the  world."'"  Speculation  in  a  digital 
medium,  an  Evolutionary  Architecture,  might  then  be  con- 
sidered a  form  of  digital  nesting,  expressive  of  a  force  of 
renewal  of  cultural  imagination.  But  most  crucial  would 
be  the  extent  to  which  it  articulates  a  poetics  of  a  radi- 
cally expanded  formal  possibility  in  attaining  an  "image" 
adequate  for  habitation  of  a  displaced  spatial  sense. 

Bachelard's  interrogation  of  images  of  "felicitous  space" 
expresses  an  essential  topophilia  of  both  familiar  forms 
(the  house,  the  corner,  etc)  and  unfamiliar  ones,  which  he 
finds  inhabited  through  the  expansion  of  poetic  imagina- 


tion. In  revisiting  the  virtual  spaces  of  the  Poetics,  the 
nests  and  the  shells  of  a  projected  desire,  we  might  glean 
insight  into  a  manner  of  cultural  praxis  appropriate  to  such 
forms,  as  "a  victory  over  accidents  of  form  and  the  capri- 
cious events  of  mobility" 

But  as  such  forms  become  actualised  around  us,  the 
"blobs"  or  "hypersurfaces"  of  contemporary  desire,  there 
IS  also  the  necessity  for  imagination  to  expand  into  new 
spatial  or  temporal  territories  released  in  the  interstices 
of  digital  production,  since  these  will  be  the  sites  of 
prospective  creativity  From  the  space  of  the  digital  nest 
which  gathers  materially  around  us,  we  must  dream  of 
new  temporal/spatial  interstices  which  might  serve  to 
propitiate  the  desire  for  images  of  the  (future)  "function 
of  inhabiting."  It  is  here,  after  a  perhaps  necessarily  ra- 
tional period  of  technical  assimilation,  that  architectural 
discourse  must  nurture  a  spatial  propensity  sufficient  for 
the  emergence  of  a  poetics,  which  is  the  condition  for  the 
emergence  of  a  sufficient  digital  image. 


Notes 

'  Gaston  Bachelard,  The  Poetics  of  Space.  (Beacon  Press,  trans.  Orion  Press, 
Inc.,  1969),  XIV  -  xv. 

^  Ibid..  106, 

^  Ibid. 

'^  See,  for  instance,  the  section  on  "Evolutionary  Techniques"  p.68.  Section  2 

^  Following  Henri  Bergson,  we  might  usefully  separate  geological  from  geomet 
ric  form,  where  the  geological  manifests  a  temporal  dimension,  as  if  trapping 
time  in  its  very  materiality,  sensed  as  such. 

^  Bachelard's  remark  is  starkly  simple:  "in  order  to  achieve  grotesqueness.  it 
suffices  to  abridge  an  evolution."  pl08-9  "Shells",  Beacon  Press  1969,  trans, 
Orion  Press,  Inc. 

*'  Consider  comments  such  as  "The  genetic  code  of  the  selected  models  is 
then  used  to  breed  further  populations  in  a  cyclical  manner..."  on  "Evolution- 
ary Techniques"  p.68,  Section  2.  or  "We  are  inclined  to  think  that  this  final 
transformation  should  be  process-driven,  and  that  one  should  code  not  the 
form  but  rather  precise  instructions  for  the  formative  process."  "Transforming 
the  Output",  p69.  Section  2. 

^  "'Imaginative  use'  in  our  case  means  using  the  computer  -  like  the  genu  in 
the  bottle  -  to  compress  evolutionary  space  and  time  so  that  complexity  and 
emergent  form  are  able  to  develop.  The  computers  of  our  Imagination  are 
also  a  source  of  inspiration  -  an  electronic  muse."  John  Frazer,  An  Evolutionary 
Architecture.  pl8.  Introduction 

^  Alloplastic  IS  a  term  developed  by  Sandor  Ferenczi  and  discussed  at  length 
in  my  AD  essay  "From  Autoplastic  to  Alloplastic  Space."  The  terms  articulate 
the  difference  between  a  rigid  and  static  relationship  between  the  environment 
and  the  self,  an  autoplastic  rigidity,  and  a  malleable  and  reciprocal  alloplastic 
deformability 


10 


Bachelard,  103. 


Goulthorpe     87 


88     Goulthorpe 


Aegis  Hyposurface 

The  Aegis  project  has  been  developed 
as  an  attempt  to  generate  a  dynami- 
cally reconfigurable  surface  capable  of 
responding  real-time  to  a  wide  variety  of 
environmental  input.  It  takes  the  calcu- 
lating speed  of  computers  to  permit  the 
rapid  translation  between  different  media 
-  sound,  movement,  mathematics,  text, 
etc  -  such  that  any  electronic  input  may 
reconfigure  the  position  of  a  matrix  of 
points  in  space.  This  has  been  achieved 
through  a  series  of  working  prototypes  us- 
ing pneumatic  pistons  coupled  to  a  highly 
performative  information  bus.  In  its  fluid 
physical  responsiveness  the  hyposurface 
announces  the  possibility  of  an  architec- 
ture of  reciprocity  and  an  olloplastic  rela- 
tion between  the  body  and  the  physical 
environment.  Its  affect  is  generated  as  a 
gathering  of  ambient  material,  a  form  of 
digital  nesting.  Our  interest  is  in  guoging 
the  shift  in  cultural  imagining  necessitated 
by  a  now  dynamic  architectural  possibility. 


Goulthorpe     89 


Sanford  Kwinter 

The  Computational  Fallacy 


The  "mechanical"  and  the  "electronic."  are  by  themselves 
not  paradigms  and  do  not  represent  distinct,  successive, 
agonistic  "ages"  or  irreducible  worlds  in  collision.  To 
continue  to  think  of  these  in  such  vi/orn  and  sterile  vi^ays 
can  have  no  other  effect  than  to  hide  from  ourselves  their 
political  dimensions.  The  mechanical  and  the  electronic 
(and  most  of  what  is  denoted  by  these  terms  in  present 
usage)  are  in  fact  expressions  of  two  continuous,  interde- 
pendent historicalontological  modalities:  those  of  Matter 
(substance)  and  Intelligence  (order,  shape). 

Every  unit  of  intelligible  matter  in  our  technical  or  cultural 
world,  regardless  how  simple,  is  refined  or  organized  to  a 
degree  sufficient  at  least  to  distinguish  it  from  the  random 
and  disordered  background  flux  or  noise  of  the  natural 
world.  (Of  course,  natural  objects  may  possess  this  same 
property  of  refinement  in  proportion  to  how  closely  they 
are  formed  and  organized  by  the  processes  of  life,  pro- 
cesses now  commonly  understood  to  extend  beyond  the 
merely  organic.)  In  this  sense  such  matter  may  be  said  to 
possess  a  greater  or  lesser  amount  of  "embedded  intel- 
ligence." One  can  understand  by  this  a  set  of  instructions 
accumulated  over  the  ages  (through  the  application  of 
tools  and  controlled  processes)  and  incorporated  into  this 
matter  as  a  kind  of  permanent  and  continually  reactivated 
"memory"  (either  through  shape,  rhythm,  or  disposition 
as  in  a  tool,  or  through  purity  or  precise  proportion  as  in 
the  relationships  of  metals  in  an  alloy  and  the  properties 
derived  therefrom). 

All  matter,  even  totally  disorganized  matter,  possesses 
some  degree  of  active  Intelligence  (what  Diderot  called 
"sensitivity"),  and  the  refinement  of  matter  Is  always  the 
refinement  of  the  Intelligence  embedded  within  it.  When 
different  types  of  matter,  or  different  orientations  of  in- 
telligence m  matter,  are  brought  together  in  a  proper  or 
sympathetic  rhythm  or  proportion,  an  entirely  new  level 
of  intelligence  is  created.  As  the  complexity  of  added  and 
engaged  elements  increases,  one  approaches,  then  arrives 
at,  the  "mechanical." 


Now  the  mechanical  is  thought  to  be  primitive  in  perhaps 
two  senses:  First,  its  relationships  of  intelligence  are 
based  on  rudimentary,  visible  associations  of  isolated  ele- 
ments that  interact  at  a  very  reduced  level  of  information 
exchange.  What  this  means  Is  that  In  mechanical  devices, 
most  qualitative  information  tends  to  be  reduced  or  elimi- 
nated in  favor  of  a  very  controlled,  exclusive  extraction  of 
quantitative  flows  (rates  of  movement,  measures,  etc). 
Most  elements  in  a  mechanical  complex  have  a  single 
function  and  a  single  set  of  relationships,  so  that  most 
of  the  embedded  material  intelligence  Is  suppressed  In 
favor  of  a  single  quality  or  dimension  of  expression.  (It  Is 
here  that  the  commonly  confused  terms  "mechanical"  and 
"mechanistic"  find  a  justifiable  convergence.  The  first  term 
means  having  to  do  with  machines,  the  second  means  de- 
terministic and  reductionistic.) 

Second,  the  mechanical  is  said  to  be  primitive  in  relation 
to  electronic  processes,  because  the  latter  appear  to  mani- 
fest the  same  magical  qualities  of  material  intelligence 
found  in  fundamental,  free,  and  unprocessed  matter,  a 
set  of  qualities  that  can  be  summed  up  in  a  single  word, 
self-control.  "Control"  here  means  simply  the  sustained 
application  of  intelligent  -  or  organizing  -  force  over  time. 
While  the  mechanical  complex  seems  over-designed  and 
therefore  limited  to  very  rigid  and  predetermined  path- 
ways of  development  (i.e.,  no  development  at  all),  archaic 
and  electronic  matter-complexes  are  thought  to  be  able  to 
move  and  evolve  in  coherent  yet  unpredetermined  ways. 
Their  manifest  intelligence  is  both  mulfispectral  and  free- 
form  or  "complex." 

The  movement  of  all  (advanced)  technological  societies 
has  been  one  from  archaic  matter  intelligence  (empirical, 
qualitative,  mulfispectral)  to  mechanical  matter  intelli- 
gence (numerical,  dissociated),  but  only  incompletely  and 
each  m  its  own  way. 

In  the  West,  mechanical  matter  intelligence  took  on  an 
almost  religious  status  (as  electronics  is  certainly  achiev- 


90     Kwinter 


ing  today)  to  the  point  of  annihilating  archaic  matter 
intelligence  from  public  and  social  memory.  Now  the  way 
in  which  a  society  organizes  its  systems  of  intuition  -  its 
science,  its  philosophy,  and  its  technics  -  is  in  every  man- 
ner a  political  one.  The  real  and  possible  arrangements  of 
intelligence  and  matter  in  nature  are  one  thing  (and  likely 
unlimited),  yet  how  we  represent  these  possibilities  to  our- 
selves is  another  To  speak  of  a  mechanical  paradigm  of 
material  qualities  and  perceptible  functions  and  to  oppose 
this  to  an  electronic  one  of  immaterial  processes  and  pure 
intelligence  is  absurd  and  dangerous.  Absurd,  because  de- 
spite what  cyberspace  gladhanders  may  think,  there  can 
clearly  be  no  shape  or  order  (Intelligence)  without  matter, 
even  if  this  matter  is  comprised  of  nothing  more  than  pure 
photons  (cinema,  retinal  laser  projection)  or  molecular 
acoustic  resonance  (music),  etc.,  and  dangerous,  because 
such  cliches  do  little  more  than  render  us  stupid  and  doc- 
ile in  the  face  of  disfiguring  yet  well-camouflaged  social 
and  historical  processes. 

What  is  at  stake  today  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  eclipse 
of  a  material  or  mechanical  world  by  an  increasingly  elec- 
tronic one.  but  rather  the  emergence  of  a  new  regime  of 
"subjection"  that  uses  the  undeniable  allure  of  an  archaic 
revival  (a  return  to  matter,  complexity,  and  free  develop- 
ment) to  facilitate  a  repressive  reorganization  of  social 
space  as  well  as  a  mastery  of  the  very  conceptual  lexicon 
with  which  this  reorganization  will  be  thought  through. 
More  bluntly:  what  is  taking  place  today  under  the  guise 
of  such  "rational"  historical  process  is  the  systematic 
formation  of  a  new  subjectivity  -  a  new  type  of  man,  to 
use  Nietzsche's  expression  -  whose  matter/intelligence 
variables  are  being  re-engmeered  and  finely  calibrated  to 
fit  those  of  a  new  machinic  workplace-society  into  which 
s/he  IS  to  be  seamlessly  integrated. 

It  IS  therefore  disconcerting  to  observe  the  direction  of 
much  discussion  in  the  design  world  today  around  the 
advent  of  new  telecommunications  technologies,  comput- 
erization, and  software-driven  milieus.  These  developments 
are  either  extolled  as  "exciting,"  "new,"  and  "full  of  new 
freedoms  and  possibilities"  (by  those  blissfully  uncon- 
cerned that  much  of  what  is  being  so  celebrated  is  but  an 
extension  of  all  that  is  oldest  and  most  repressive  in  our 
political  and  corporeal  history),  or  else  are  seen  as  posing 
an  unavoidable  or  even  welcome  challenge  to  an  already 
weakened  or  near-obsolete  domain  of  cultural  practice, 
namely  the  slow,  grave,  viscous  world  of  matter. 

The  routine  disdain  heaped  on  matter  by  both  these  points 
of  view  is  in  fact  focused  ideologically  on  an  officially 
distorted  notion  of  the  mechanical  -  made  now  to  mean 
anything  that  is  concrete  and  available  to  intuition.  Our 
task  today  I  would  argue,  is  to  resist  these  pathways  of 


thought,  and  wherever  possible  to  expand  the  concept  of 
the  concrete  and  to  extend  the  play  of  intuition  into  new 
domains. 

To  do  this  effectively  it  must  remain  within  our  power  (con- 
ceptual and  political)  to  refuse  the  advent,  not  so  much 
of  the  specific  machines  and  techniques  of  contemporary 
development,  but  of  the  broader  systems  of  rationality 
in  which  they  come  packaged  or  for  which  they  serve  as 
Trojan  horses. 

Communications  networks,  computers,  microprocessor 
control  systems  are  socially  toxic  entities,  I  would  argue, 
primarily  when  used  correctly,  that  is,  in  their  capacity 
to  routinize  interactions  with  people  and  processes  in  in- 
creasingly engineered,  confined,  and  deterministic  spaces. 
It  is  our  duty  and  mandate  to  refuse  this  new,  pseudo- 
material  space  entirely,  and  to  follow  the  "minor,"  archaic 
path  through  the  microchip;  that  is,  to  make  the  electronic 
world  work  for  us  to  reimpart  the  rich  indeterminacy  and 
magic  of  matter  out  of  the  and,  cruel,  and  numericalized 
world  of  the  reductionist-mechanical  and  the  disciplinary- 
electronic. 

No  computer  on  earth  can  match  the  processing  power 
of  even  the  most  simple  natural  system,  be  it  of  water 
molecules  on  a  warm  rock,  a  rudimentary  enzyme  system, 
or  the  movement  of  leaves  m  the  wind.  The  most  power- 
ful and  challenging  use  of  the  computer  (aside  from  the 
obvious  benefits  of  automated  number  crunching  in  purely 
numerical  domains  such  as  accounting)  is  in  learning  how 
to  make  a  simple  organization  (the  computer)  model  what 
is  intrinsic  about  a  more  complex,  infinitely  entailed  orga- 
nization (the  natural  or  real  system). 

Implicit  here  is  the  idea  of  learning  how  to  make  matter 
model  matter,  or  how  to  study  natural  or  "wild"  Intelligence 
m  a  contained  but  active,  refining  domain.  In  this  use  the 
computer  becomes  metallurgical  substance,  it  extends  the 
exploratory  evolutionary  process  of  differentiation  and  re- 
finement by  inventing  new  levels  of  order  and  shape.  The 
computer  and  its  software  together  can  form  a  Matter/ 
Intelligence  unit  of  a  very  primitive  but  useful  kind.  But 
to  do  this,  the  computer,  in  the  triad  Nature-Mind-Com- 
puter, must  play  only  the  appropriate  intermediary  role  of 
interface  between  Nature  and  Mind.  This  would  be  in  clear 
contradistinction  to  what  is  more  often  the  case  today, 
where  computational  environments  provide  a  customary 
but  imperceptible  experiential  envelope  from  which  Nature 
(and  all  nondeterministic  unfolding)  is  excluded  and  within 
which  the  activity  horizon  of  Mind  is  insidiously  confined. 
We  must  not  believe  the  narcotizing  hype  that  an  emerging 
electronic  world  is  poised  to  liberate  us  from  a  mechanical 
one,  nor  even  that  there  exists  an  electronosphere  funda- 


Kwinter    91 


mentally  discontinuous  from  the  mechanoshpere  that  has 
formed  us  till  now. 

It  is  true  that  an  important  transition  is  taking  place: 
mechanical  relations  are  being  dramatically  transferred  to 
new  and  different  levels  -  like  the  little  ball  in  a  scam  art- 
ist's shell  game  -  but  they  are  certainly  not  disappearing. 
What  is  more,  this  transition  state  is  an  unstable  one,  and 
one  of  the  possible  arms  on  history's  bifurcation  diagram 
(the  one  that  does  not  lead  smoothly  to  the  total  routmiza- 
tion  and  economic  subsumption  of  the  human  organism) 
leads  at  once  to  the  possibility  of  multiple  new  ecologies 
of  human  existence  as  well  as  to  the  dark,  possibly  unfath- 
omable mysteries  of  nature  itself. 

What  we  need  today  is  twofold:  On  the  one  hand,  resis- 
tance -  we  need  to  direct  our  theoretical  activity  away  from 
simple-minded  cliches  in  order  to  conceptualize  the  proper 
materiality  of  the  electronic  with  its  brutal  effect  on  both 
human  energy  and  the  physical  environment:  and  on  the 
other  hand,  productive  affirmation  -  to  actively  press  com- 
putation toward  its  deep  rootedness  in  the  archaic  world  of 
natural  intelligence,  which  means  at  the  very  least  to  use 
computation  just  as  the  early  moderns  used  the  telescope 
and  the  microscope,  to  engage  aspects  of  nature  whose 
logic  and  pattern  had  previously  remained  ungraspable 
because  they  were  lodged  at  too  great  a  remove  from  the 
modalities  of  human  sense  and  intuition. 


During  the  Renaissance,  specific  movements  and  struc- 
tures of  astronomical  and  microscopic  scale  were  for  the 
first  time  brought  into  the  purview  of  human  thought  and 
perception,  and  in  the  process  certain  forms  of  historical 
tyranny  became  forever  impossible.  Today  the  computer 
offers  the  possibility  of  apprehending  developmental 
patterns  of  extraordinary  and  unprecedented  depth  and 
abstraction,  offering  tantalizing  glimpses  of  the  very 
freeform  structure  of  time  itself  (chaos,  complexity,  self- 
organization). 

Just  as  Lucretius's  hydraulic  hypothesis  in  his  ancient 
Treatise  On  Nature  once  proposed  to  free  humans  from  the 
capriciousness  and  prejudices  of  the  gods,  so  this  new 
tool  -  among  all  the  horrors  to  which  it  is  already  giving 
place  -  may  well  bear  the  potential  to  unlock  the  door  on 
the  universal  laws  that  govern  the  appearance  and  destruc- 
tion of  form,  and  in  so  doing  to  free  us  from  the  multiple 
tyranny  of  determinism  and  from  the  poverty  of  a  linear, 
numerical  world.  Yet  there  should  be  no  illusions:  the  pos- 
sibilities for  such  a  scenario  are  almost  already  foreclosed, 
and  it  will  certainly  not  come  to  pass  with  anything  short 
of  a  colossal,  sustained,  and  collective  act  of  human  will. 
It  is  we,  the  engineers  of  human  environment  and  activity, 
who  bear  the  burden  to  ensure  a  properly  human  pleading 
in  this  struggle  for  our  fate. 


92     Kwinter 


Illustration  Credits 


IVIclVlillin.  1  From  Edward  R.  LaChapelle:  Field  Guide  to 
Snow  Crystals  (Seattle:  U  of  Washington  Press,  1973),  p. 
6:  2  and  3  from  W.  A.  Bentley  &  W.J,  Humphreys:  Snow 
Crystals  (NY:  McGraw-Hill,  1931):  4  photograph  by  author. 

Gattegno.   All  images  by  the  author 

Burry.   All  images  by  the  author 

Chang,  1  Infrared  satellite  imagery  of  the  West  Coast 
from  February  21  to  February  25,  2003  from  Geostation- 
ary Satellite  Server,  National  Oceanic  and  Atmospheric 
Administration  National  Environmental  Satellite,  Data,  and 
Information  Service,  2003:  2  Landsat  images  of  Los  Ange- 
les, NASA,  1990;  3  and  4  photographs  taken  by  author;  5 
from  SeaWiFS  Project,  NASA  Goddard  Space  Flight  Center 
an  ORBIMAGE,  2000. 

Divola.  The  images  have  been  collected  by  the  author  over 
several  years,  and  are  anonomous  photographs  taken  by 
various  Hollywood  studios  during  shooting  of  the  listed 
motion  pictures.  Page  35,  source  unknown:  p.  38,  Tortilla 
Flat.  MGM  1942;  p.  39,  Green  Mansions.  MGM  1959  and 
source  unknown:  p.  40,  Ice  Palace.  Warner  Brothers  1960 


and  The  Outrides,  MGM  1950:  p.  41,  Stand  Up  and  Fight, 
MGM  1939  and  As  the  Earth  Turns,  Warner  Brothers  1934. 

Gissen.  All  images  from.  Big  and  Green:  Toward  Sustain- 
able Architecture  in  the  21st  Century.  David  Gissen  (Editor). 
National  Building  Museum.  Washington,  DC;  2003.  1 
photograph  by  Mark  Luthrmger;  2  photograph  courtesy 
K.L.  Ng  Photography:  3  photograph  by  Hans  Werlemann; 
4  image  by  MVRDV. 

Arbona,  Greden,  Joachim.    All  images  by  the  authors. 

Artnonnson.  Images  by  Studio  Granda,  except  5  Bifrost 
photographs  by  Sigurgeir  Sigurjonsson. 

Sethi.   All  images  by  the  author 

Pierce.    All  images  by  the  author 

Goulthorpe.   All  lamges  by  dECOi  Architects. 

Call  for  Submissions.  Image  from  Hevelius,  J.  1647, 
Selenographia:  sive,  Lunae  Descnptio  (Facsimile,  Johnson 
Reprint  Corporation,  New  York,  1967). 


Illustration  Credits    93 


Contributors 


Javier  Arbona  is  a  Master  of  Science  in  Architecture 
Studies  candidate  at  MIT.  He  holds  a  B.Arch  from  Cornell 
University,  and  received  an  Eidlitz  Travel  Award  from  the 
Department  of  Architecture  at  Cornell  University  to  ex- 
amine the  prison  industrial  complex  in  relationship  to  the 
urbanism  of  Los  Angeles  and  Southern  California. 

Petur  H.  Armannsson  has  been  the  Director  of  the  Archi- 
tecture Department  of  the  Reykjavik  Art  Museum  since 
1993,  and  has  authored  numerous  articles  and  exhibitions 
on  20th  century  architecture  in  Iceland.  He  is  Visiting  Pro- 
fessor in  Design  Theory  at  the  Iceland  Academy  of  Arts. 

Mark  Burry  is  Professor  of  Innovation  and  Director  of 
the  Spatial  Information  Architecture  Laboratory  at  RMIT 
m  Melbourne,  Australia,  and  Consultant  Architect  to  the 
Temple  Sagrada  Familia,  Barcelona,  Spam. 

Kyrstal  Chang  is  a  writer  and  designer  based  in  Los  An- 
geles. 

John  Divola  is  an  artist  and  Professor  of  Art  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  California.  Riverside.  His  work  has  been  featured  in 
over  50  solo  and  over  150  group  exhibitions.  Two  recent 
books  by  Divola  are.  Continuity,  and  Isolated  Houses.  Book 
of  Original  Artwork  with  Essay  by  Jan  Tumlir. 

Peter  A.  Fritzell  is  a  Professor  of  English  and  the  Patricia 
Hamar  Boldt  Professor  of  Liberal  Studies  at  Lawrence 
University.  His  work  includes  Nature  Writing  and  America: 
Essays  upon  a  Cultural  Type  (Iowa  State  University  Press, 
1990). 

Christine  Cerqueira  Caspar  is  an  M. Arch/Master  in  City 
Planning  student  at  MIT,  and  holds  a  BA  in  Environmental 
Studies  from  Brown  University  She  is  currently  working 
on  her  thesis  on  the  relationship  between  the  built  environ- 
ment and  "nature"  in  Boston's  Seaport  District. 


Nataly  Gattegno  is  visiting  assistant  professor  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia.  She  holds  an  M.Arch  from  Princeton 
University,  and  an  MA  from  Cambridge  University,  St. John's 
College.  Ms.  Gattegno  teaches  architectural  design  and 
seminars  exploring  research  and  representation  of  infor- 
mation. She  IS  a  founding  partner  of  FutureCitiesLab. 

David  Gissen  is  the  curator  of  architecture  and  design  at 
the  National  Building  Museum.  He  organized  the  catalog 
and  exhibition  "Big  and  Green:  Toward  Sustainable  Archi- 
tecture in  the  21st  Century,"  an  examination  of  recent 
large-scale  environmentally  sensitive  buildings. 

IVIark  Goulthorpe  is  director  of  dECOi  Architects  (Pans  and 
London),  which  has  established  a  reputation  for  design  that 
opens  new  perspectives  for  architectural  praxis  in  light  of 
the  shift  to  digital  media.  He  will  be  Associate  Professor  in 
architectural  design  at  MIT  in  Fall  2003. 

Lara  Greden  is  a  PhD  candidate  at  MIT  in  Architecture. 
She  holds  a  dual  MS  from  MIT  in  Civil  and  Environmental 
Engineering  and  in  Technology  and  Policy,  and  a  bachelor 
in  Mechanical  Engineering  from  the  University  of  Minne- 
sota. Her  research  focuses  on  decision-making  for  sustain- 
able buildings  and  application  of  options  theory. 

Mark  Jarzombek  is  Associate  Professor  of  History,  Theory, 
and  Criticism  in  the  Department  of  Architecture  at  MIT  He 
has  written  on  a  variety  of  subjects  from  the  Renaissance 
to  the  modern. 

Mitchell  Joachim  is  a  PhD  candidate  at  MIT  in  Architecture 
Design  Computation,  and  a  faculty  member  of  the  School 
of  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  Boston.  He  holds  an  MAUD 
from  Harvard  University  and  an  M.Arch  from  Columbia  Uni- 
versity. As  Archmode  Studio  principal,  he  is  a  consultant 
on  architectural  designs  involving  ecology,  informatics,  and 
urban  habitat  forms. 


94     Contributors 


Errata 


Sanford  Kwinter  is  a  design  theorist  and  writer,  and  teach- 
es design  In  the  School  of  Architecture  at  Rice  University. 
He  IS  co-founder  and  editor  of  Zone  and  Zone  Books,  author 
of  Architectures  of  Time,  co-author  of  Mutations,  and  editor 
of  several  books  on  science,  technology,  and  design.  Kwin- 
ter Is  currently  at  work  on  a  book  on  Africa  and  the  origin 
of  form. 

T.  Scott  McMillin  is  an  Associate  Professor  of  English  at 
Oberlin  College,  where  he  teaches  courses  on  interpreta- 
tion, nature,  and  American  Literature.  The  author  of  Our 
Preposterous  Use  of  Literature:  Emerson  &  tine  Nature  of  Read- 
ing (Unw/ersWy  of  Illinois  Press,  2000),  McMillin  is  currently 
working  on  a  book  on  rivers  in  American  life  and  letters. 

Matthew  Pierce  is  an  M.Arch  student  at  MIT,  currently 
working  for  the  Renzo  Piano  Building  Workshop  in  Pans. 
In  2002,  he  researched  the  use  of  new  digital  photogram- 
metric  survey  tools  for  architects,  producing  three-dimen- 
sional models  of  portions  of  two  facades  of  the  Sagrada 
Familia  in  Barcelona.  He  previously  lived  and  worked  as 
an  architect  in  Jackson,  Wyoming,  where  he  spent  much  of 
his  free  time  walking  m  the  Teton,  Gros  Ventre,  and  Wind 
River  mountain  ranges. 

Sanjit  Sethi  is  a  Lecturer/Visitmg  Artist  at  MIT's  Visual 
Arts  Program.  He  holds  a  BFA  from  Alfred  University, 
an  MFA  from  the  University  of  Georgia,  and  an  MS  m  Ad- 
vanced Visual  Studies  from  MIT.  He  is  currently  working  on 
the  Building  Nomads  Project  in  India,  and  a  road  interven- 
tion project  entitled  Rumble  Strip,  both  involving  various 
academic,  social,  and  geographic  communities. 


The  following  unintentional  mistakes  were  made  in  nresh- 
olds  24  (Spring  2002):  46-53. 

Page  48.  Paragraph  2:  "The  tomb  has  panels  narrating  the 
story  of  the  Shah..."  should  read  "The  tomb  has  panels 
narrative  the  story  of  the  Shahnameh..."  The  'Shahnameh' 
or  the  'Book  of  Kings'  is  Ferdowsi's  major  work,  which  tells 
the  story  of  the  lives  of  various  mythical  and  historic  Per- 
sian kings.  Images  from  the  Shahnameh  were  carved  on 
the  walls  leading  to  the  tomb  of  Ferdowsi. 

Page  50,  Paragraph  1:  "By  the  mid-1980's...and  the  space 
around  the  tomb  complex  was  named  Freedom  Square." 
should  read  "By  the  mid-1980's...and  the  space  around 
the  complex  was  renamed  Freedom  Square."  The  'Shahy- 
ad'  square,  which  was  renamed  'Azadi  or  Freedom'  square 
after  the  Revolution  is  not  a  tomb  complex  but  a  museum. 


Contributors    95 


Exploration 


Great  joy  in  camp.  We  are  in  view  of  the  ocean, 
tinis  great  Pacific  Ocean  which  we  have  been  so 
long  anxious  to  see,  and  the  roaring  or  noise 
made  by  the  waves  breaking  on  the  rocky  shores 
(as  I  suppose)  may  be  heard  distinctly. 

-  Captain  Clark,  7  November  1805 

In  civilizations  without  boats,  dreams  dry  up, 
espionage  takes  the  place  of  adventure,  and  the 
police  take  the  place  of  pirates. 

-  Michel  Foucault,  Of  Other  Spoces,  1967 

We  are  continually  reminded  that  few  'un- 
spoiled'/ unexplored  places  still  exist  on  earth, 
yet  have  our  dreams  dried  up  as  the  frontier 
continuously  shrinks? 


The  gradual  process  of  understanding  and  rec- 
onciling discoveries  of  'nev/'  places  and  people 
is  perhaps  as  old  as  human  life.  Yet  unlike  large 
population  shifts,  exploration  remains  personal, 
dependant  on  individuals,  small  expedition 
parties  or  even  modern  unmanned  mechani- 
cal observation.  Exploration  entails  not  only  the 
journey,  but  also  a  desire  to  represent  and  map 
new  territories  and  their  inhabitants. 


This  confrontation  with  the  'new'  and  desire  to 
represent  and  map  it  occurs  not  only  through 
travel  in  physical  distance,  but  also  through  ar- 
cheological  travel  in  time.  How  do  the  unearth- 
ings  of  'new'  historic  ruins  in  cases  including 
Chiapas,  Pompeii,  and  contemporary  Athens 
rewrite  history  and  restructure  urban  space? 


Technology  in  the  modern  age  has,  of  course, 
brought  great  alterations  to  exploration.  Inven- 
tions from  train  travel  to  photography  to  space 
flight  have  shrunk  the  globe  and  moved  us  off  it, 
yet  is  space  really  the  final  frontier? 


In  addition  the  ever-expanding  boundaries  of 
space,  today  biologists  are  returning  to  the  ur- 
ban environment,  discovering  new  species  in 
New  York's  Central  Park.  Contemporary  frontiers 
may  be  nanoscale  biological  systems,  or  may  be 
created  by  socio-political  borders.  No  Trespass- 
ing signs,  and  video  surveillance  cameras.  Auto 
companies  suggest  that  we  desire  an  Expedition 
or  an  Explorer  in  our  driveway,  yet  might  explo- 
ration be  interpreted  throughout  history  as  well 
as  utilized  in  current  practice  as  more  than  just  a 
marketing  scheme? 


Please  send  materials  or  correspondece  to; 

Lauren  Kroiz,  Editor 

Thresholds 

MIT  Department  of  Architecture 

Room  7-337 

77  Massachusetts  Ave. 

Cambridge,  MA   02139 

thresh@mit.edu 

Submissions  are  due  1  November  2003 


96    Call  For  Submissions 


Submission  Policy 

Thresholds  attempts  to  print  only  original 
matertal.  Manuscripts  for  review  should 
be  no  more  than  2.500  words.  Text  must 
be  formatted  m  accordance  with  The 
Chicago  Manual  of  Style.  Spelling  should 
follow  American  convention  and  quota- 
tions must  be  translated  into  English. 
All  submissions  must  be  submitted  elec- 
tronically, on  a  CD  or  disk,  accompanied 
by  hard  copies  of  text  and  images.  Text 
should  be  saved  as  Microsoft  Word  or 
RTF  format,  while  any  accompanying  im- 
ages should  be  sent  as  TIFF  files  with  a 
resolution  of  at  least  300  dpi  at  8"  by  9" 
print  size.  Figures  should  be  numbered 
clearly  in  the  text.  Image  captions  and 
credits  must  be  included  with  submis- 
sions. It  IS  the  responsibility  of  the  aU' 
thor  to  secure  permissions  for  image  use 
and  pay  any  reproduction  fees.  A  brief 
author  bio  must  accompnay  the  text. 

We  welcome  responses  to  current  Thresh- 
olds articles.  Responses  should  be  no 
more  than  300  words  and  should  arrive 
by  the  deadline  of  the  following  issue. 
Submissions  by  e-mail  are  not  permitted 
without  the  permission  of  the  editor 


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CONTRIBUTORS    "^ 


Javier  Arbnna 


'^  i.!-*  I      r-\i   III'- 


Mark  Burry     'X^ir^ 


Krystal  Chang 

John  Divola 

Peter  Fritzell 

Christine  Cerqueira  Caspar 

Nataly  Gattegno 

David  Gissen 

Mark  Goulthorpe 

Lara  Greden 

Mark  Jarzombek 

Mitchell  Joachim 

Sanford  Kwinter     r 

T.  Scott  McMillin 

Matthew  Pierce 

Sanjit  Sethi 


Date  Due 


Lib-26-67